Running Lean: Iterate from Plan A to a Plan That Works (Lean Series) [Hardcover]

Ash Maurya (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 6, 2012 | Series: Lean Series

We live in an age of unparalleled opportunity for innovation. We're building more products than ever before, but most of them fail--not because we can't complete what we set out to build, but because we waste time, money, and effort building the wrong product.
What we need is a systematic process for quickly vetting product ideas and raising our odds of success. That's the promise of Running Lean.

In this inspiring book, Ash Maurya takes you through an exacting strategy for achieving a "product/market fit" for your fledgling venture, based on his own experience in building a wide array of products from high-tech to no-tech. Throughout, he builds on the ideas and concepts of several innovative methodologies, including the Lean Startup, Customer Development, and bootstrapping.

Running Lean is an ideal tool for business managers, CEOs, small business owners, developers and programmers, and anyone who's interested in starting a business project.

• Find a problem worth solving, then define a solution
• Engage your customers throughout the development cycle
• Continually test your product with smaller, faster iterations
• Build a feature, measure customer response, and verify/refute the idea
• Know when to "pivot" by changing your plan's course
• Maximize your efforts for speed, learning, and focus
• Learn the ideal time to raise your "big round" of funding

"If you are starting a company, or want to adopt the Lean Startup approach, Running Lean is a must read."

- Brad Feld, Managing Director, Foundary Group

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Exclusive Interview with Ash Maurya, Author of Running Lean

Q. Why is your book "Running Lean" especially important now?
We live at a time where we have so much power at our fingertips, where we are building more products than ever before. But the odds of building successful products haven't gone up. We're simply building more stuff nobody wants. What we need is a systematic process for quickly vetting and building successful products. That is the promise of "Running Lean."

Q. What is the top reason startups fail?
Most startups fail, not because they fail to build the product they want to build, but they fail to find a market for their product before running out of resources.

Q. What reason do you attribute for this failure?
Entrepreneurs are typically most passionate about their solution and often spend a disproportionate amount of time perfecting their solution only to find they were optimizing something nobody wanted.

Q. What do founders need to start doing now in order to achieve success?
The first step is shifting their mindset. The "true product" of a startup is not the solution, but the business model. Once founders start thinking of the business model as "the product," they start prioritizing risks differently. The key to building a successful product is maximizing learning about what's riskiest per unit time. Sometimes that's the underlying solution, but often times it's not.

Q. Describe the top tactical technique for systematically building a startup in today's economy?
A core part of the process is identifying what's riskiest and then doing the smallest thing possible to test that risk. From this principle you can derive specific tactics to fit your particular product. For instance, in the book I argue that you can initially test a lot of what's risky without building the product first using proxies like customer interviews, mockups, and videos.

Review

"Ash has put together a book I wish I'd read before pursuing my own startup. The level of detail, including case studies and practical applications, make this book a resource worthy of sitting on every aspiring entrepreneur's shelf."

-Rand Fishkin, CEO and Cofounder, SEOmoz; Coauthor, The Art of SEO

"Ash has laid out a clear compass for anyone to validate their ideas, solve real problems and create a successful business. I'd encourage this book to anyone trying to get a business off the ground."

- Noah Kagan, Chief Sumo of AppSumo.com

"Lean concepts are exciting but it's hard to know what to actually do. Ash not only gives advice but makes it practicable--this is the first comprehensive guidebook for how to execute a Lean Startup."

- Jason Cohen, founder of WP Engine & Smart Bear.

"Ash provides compelling, actionable guidance for applying lean principles to a startup. His startup canvas changed the way I think about my own startup. This book is a valuable guide whether you are a serial entrepreneur or a first time founder."

- Sean Ellis, Founder & CEO of CatchFree

"Easily one of the best technical books on Lean Startup ever written. Period. End of point. Done."

- Dan Martell, Founder of Clarity.fm & Angel Investor

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media; Second Edition edition (March 6, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1449305172
• ISBN-13: 978-1449305178
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.8 x 8.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (204 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,148 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #2 in Books > Computers & Technology > Business & Management > Careers
  • #8 in Books > Computers & Technology > Business & Management > Manager's Guides to Computing
  • #19 in Books > Business & Investing > Small Business & Entrepreneurship > New Business Enterprises

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 29 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars An engaging guide for startups, and any product development effort March 1, 2012

By J Mello

Format:Kindle Edition

This book is a concise guide that helps you take immediate action in using lean startup and customer development principles. More simply, as the subtitle states, it shows you how to "Iterate from Plan A to a Plan That Works". The book opens with a brief chapter on the principles behind Lean Startup and Customer Development. For each chapter after that, Ash describes what you will learn, shows you clearly what you need to do, and what decisions you need to make.

The book's chapters are:

Introduction
1. Meta-Principles
2. Running Lean Illustrated
3. Create Your Lean Canvas
4. Prioritize Where to Start
5. Get Ready to Experiment
6. Get Ready to Interview Customers
7. The Problem Interview
8. The Solution Interview
9. Get to Release 1.0
10. Get Ready to Measure
11. The MVP Interview
12. Validate Customer Life Cycle
13. Don't Be a Feature Pusher
14. Measure Product/Market Fit
15. Conclusion
Appendix - Bonus Material - comments and insights on topics including: building a slow burn startup, thoughts on premature funding, achieving flow, pricing models, teaser and landing pages, sales letters, continuous deployment, conversion dashboards

Throughout the book, Ash shows when and how to use methods for activities like: business model planning, interviewing customers, setting up tests for hypotheses, pricing, determining your Minimum Viable Product (MVP), forming hypotheses and conducting tests.

The book isn't just theory. Ash moves beyond the discussion and rationale for using Lean Startup methods which Eric Ries covers in his book The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses. Ash uses tools, checklist, process flows, interview scripts, and visuals throughout the book to show you how to get the work done.

I've started employing pieces of this methodology in my work at a medium sized business. It is helping me lower risks for projects I manage, and also helps me get to solid solutions and products more quickly, and at lower costs.

If you want a book that will help you get to work NOW on using Lean Startup and Customer Development methods, this is it. Grab this book, and get moving!

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Practical advice that will elevate your lean startup game March 1, 2012

By Steve Odom

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

This is one of the essential books for lean startup practitioners. It isn't theory. You can tell these are real lessons from Ash's own experience running lean startups. This book is very prescriptive; telling you specific things to accomplish. The one thing I found really valuable was the focus on how to map out your startup using the one page "lean canvas". After reading this book, I really got it and elevated my lean startup game.

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Great practical advice for startups, step by step customer development March 1, 2012

By Ramon Suarez

Format:Kindle Edition

Running Lean is the best book out there for entrepreneurs that want to launch their startups using customer development and lean startup. Clear, to the point and practical, it is full of gold and no BS. The structure of the book and its real life examples make it really easy to implement in no time. If you want to DO this is your book, and you will also learn something along the way, a lot more than with other books that talk a lot of theory and are more oriented to the corporate boardroom.

I really enjoyed reading it and using it to build a new project.