Recent results from LHCb

The LHCb experiment is designed to search for effects of new physics in the heavy flavour sector. During the first year of LHC running a large sample of beauty and charm hadrons has been accumulated and the core physics programme of the experiment has started. The performance of LHCb will be described, the first measurements will be presented, and prospects assessed for precise studies of heavy flavour decays. A measurement of the LHC luminosity employing two independent techniques has allowed LHCb to measure the cross-section of b-production at 7 TeV centre-of-mass energy using well-known B-hadron decay modes. Details of improved luminosity measurements will be given.