Most startups fail. But many of those failures are preventable. The Lean Startup is a new approach being adopted across the globe, changing the way companies are built and new products are launched.
Eric Ries defines a startup as an organization dedicated to creating something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty. This is just as true for one person in a garage or a group of seasoned professionals in a Fortune 500 boardroom. What they have in common is a mission to penetrate that fog of uncertainty to discover a successful path to a sustainable business.
The Lean Startup approach fosters companies that are both more capital efficient and that leverage human creativity more effectively. Inspired by lessons from lean manufacturing, it relies on “validated learning,” rapid scientific experimentation, as well as a number of counter-intuitive practices that shorten product development cycles, measure actual progress without resorting to vanity metrics, and learn what customers really want. It enables a company to shift directions with agility, altering plans inch by inch, minute by minute.
Rather than wasting time creating elaborate business plans, The Lean Startup offers entrepreneurs - in companies of all sizes - a way to test their vision continuously, to adapt and adjust before it’s too late. Ries provides a scientific approach to creating and managing successful startups in a age when companies need to innovate more than ever.
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"Eric has created a science where previously there was only art. A must read for every serious entrepreneur—and every manager interested in innovation."
—Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz, Opsware Inc. and Netscape
“This book should be mandatory reading for entrepreneurs, and the same goes for managers who want better entrepreneurial instincts. Ries’s book is loaded with fascinating stories—not to mention countless practical principles you’ll dearly wish you’d known five years ago.” —Dan Heath, co-author of Switch and Made to Stick
“Ries shows us how to cut through the fog of uncertainty that surrounds startups. His approach is rigorous; his prescriptions are practical and proven in the field. The Lean Startup will change the way we think about entrepreneurship. As startup success rates improve, it could do more to boost global economic growth than any management book written in years.” —Tom Eisenmann, Professor of Entrepreneurship, Harvard Business School
“The Lean Startup is the book whose lessons I want every entrepreneur to absorb and apply. I know of no better guide to improve the odds of a startup's success."
—Mitchell Kapor, Founder, Lotus Development Corp.
"At Asana, we've been lucky to benefit from Eric's advice firsthand; this book will enable him to help many more entrepreneurs answer the tough questions about their business."
—Dustin Moskovitz, co-founder of Facebook and Asana
“Ries' splendid book is the essential template to understand the crucial leadership challenge of our time: initiating and managing growth!” —Warren Bennis, Distinguished Professor of Business, University of Southern California and author of the recently published, Still Surprised: A Memoir of a Life in Leadership.
"The Lean Startup isn't just about how to create a more successful entrepreneurial business, it's about what we can learn from those businesses to improve virtually everything we do. I imagine Lean Startup principles applied to government programs, to healthcare, and to solving the world's great problems. It's ultimately an answer to the question 'How can we learn more quickly what works, and discard what doesn't?'"
— Tim O'Reilly, CEO O'Reilly Media
“Eric Ries unravels the mysteries of entrepreneurship and reveals that magic and genius are not the necessary ingredients for success but instead proposes a scientific process that can be learnt and replicated. Whether you are a startup entrepreneur or corporate entrepreneur there are important lessons here for you on your quest toward the new and unknown.” —Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO
“The roadmap for innovation for the 21st century. The ideas in The Lean Startup will help create the next industrial revolution.” —Steve Blank, lecturer, Stanford University, U.C. Berkeley Haas Business School
"The key lesson of this book is that start-ups happen in the present—that messy place between the past and the future where nothing happens according to PowerPoint. Ries's ‘read and react’ approach to this sport, his relentless focus on validated learning, the never-ending anxiety of hovering between ‘persevere’ and ‘pivot’, all bear witness to his appreciation for the dynamics of entrepreneurship." —Geoffrey Moore, Author, Crossing the Chasm
"If you are an entrepreneur, read this book. If you are thinking about becoming an entrepreneur, read this book. If you are just curious about entrepreneurship, read this book. Starting Lean is today's best practice for innovators. Do yourself a favor and read this book." —Randy Komisar, founding director of TiVo and author of the bestselling The Monk and the Riddle
“How do you apply the 50 year old ideas of Lean to the fast-paced, high uncertainty world of Startups? This book provides a brilliant, well-documented, and practical answer. It is sure to become a management classic.” —Don Reinertsen, author of The Principles of Product Development Flow
“The Lean Startup is a foundational must-read for founders, enabling them to reduce product failures by bringing structure and science to what is usually informal and an art. It provides actionable ways to avoid product-learning mistakes, rigorously evaluate early signals from the market through validated learning, and decide whether to persevere or to pivot, all challenges that heighten the chance of entrepreneurial failure.” —Professor Noam Wasserman, Harvard Business School
“One of the best and most insightful new books on entrepreneurship and management I’ve ever read. Should be required reading not only for the entrepreneurs that I work with, but for my friends and colleagues in various industries who have inevitably grappled with many of the challenges that The Lean Startup addresses.” —Eugene J. Huang, Partner, True North Venture Partners
"What would happen if businesses were built from the ground up to learn what their customers really wanted? The Lean Startup is the foundation for reimagining almost everything about how work works. Don't let the word startup in the title confuse you. This is a cookbook for entrepreneurs in organizations of all sizes." —Roy Bahat, President, IGN Entertainment
“Every founding team should stop for 48 hours and read Lean Startup. Seriously stop and read this book now.” —Scott Case, CEO Startup America Partnership
“In business, a ‘lean’ enterprise is sustainable efficiency in action. Eric Ries’ revolutionary Lean Startup method will help bring your new business idea to an end result that is successful and sustainable. You’ll find innovative steps and strategies for creating and managing your own startup while learning from the real-life successes and collapses of others. This book is a must read for entrepreneurs who are truly ready to start something great!” —Ken Blanchard, coauthor of The One Minute Manager® and The One Minute Entrepreneur
“Every entrepreneur responsible for innovation within their organization should read this book. It entertainingly and meticulously develops a rigorous science for the innovation process through the methodology of “lean thinking”. This methodology provides novel and powerful tools for companies to improve the speed and efficiency of their innovation processes through minimum viable products, validated learning, innovation accounting, and actionable metrics. These tools will help organizations large and small to sustain innovation by effectively leveraging the time, passion, and skill of their talent pools.” —Andrea Goldsmith, professor of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University, and cofounder of several startups
“Business is too important to be left to luck. Eric reveals the rigorous process that trumps luck in the invention of new products and new businesses. We've made this a centerpiece of how teams work in my company . . . it works! This book is the guided tour of the key innovative practices used inside Google, Toyota, and Facebook, that work in any business.” —Scott Cook, Founder and Chairman of the Executive Committee, Intuit
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**Concepts in the book that will make your head spin:
1) Ries's Law (I'm coining this right now) - Moore's Law that states the cost of new technology will rapidly decrease thereby reducing technological risk of innovation. It's not until The Lean Startup that we realize the cost of reaching customers and thereby market risk will also rapidly decrease.
2) Entrepreneur mythology as we know it is wrong (aka Steve Jobs is not what he seems). Iconic innovators ala the founders of Apple are believed by the public to be successful because of their creative vision of the future. The Lean Startup shows that in order for founders to be successful, they must test each element of there vision against reality.
3) Demystifying startup metrics. Even in a startup mecca like NYC, few entrepreneurs understand the metrics that drive their business. Eric's Innovation Accounting paradigm will change the early-stage VC industry as we know it.
**What I like about the book:
1) Comprehensive and a pleasure to read.
2) Real world examples (case studies) from tech startups to the non-profit industry. You will not find anything like these in other books.
3) Case studies in chapters 6 & 7 alone are worth the price of the whole book.
**What I don't like:
1) The chapter titles are a bit confusing and non-descriptive.
2) I could see some savvy entrepreneurs getting bored with the beginning when there's really great content in the later chapters. But if you're new to Lean Startup, the beginning chapters are a perfect introduction for you.
3) Some of the sources are outdates. I recently checked the links at the back of the book and gotten a couple 404's, but after searching on Google was able to find the sources. (this might be fixed now, not sure)
**Final Words
As someone who is very active on the latest research into innovation and entrepreneurship as well as an long-time entrepreneur myself, I love Eric's book and think that it's going to become a true classic and stand out as THE business book to read in 2011-2012. Don't listen to the haters, just look at the reviews from people like Marc Adreesen (founder of Netscape) and Dustin Moskovitz (cofounder of Facebook), these people don't endorse you unless you you are the real deal. Eric & The Lean Startup are the real deal.
But Eric Ries in his book `The Lean Startup' shows that it doesn't have to be so. He explains that startups cannot use traditional planning an management tools because their product and customers are unknown. So, what else? Here he comes up with his Lean Startup Methodology - which is a scientific approach for creating and managing startups. Since the product and customer are not known, startups needs to develop a process of "validated learning" through which they can learn to build a sustainable business. This is different from learning through failure - which is a very expensive and wasteful process. Startups need to have a "Build-Measure-Learn" process and get continuous feedback from the market, so that they can decide whether to continue with the current plan or `pivot' into other directions. Eric shows the various ways a startup can pivot: Zoom-in pivot, Zoom-out pivot, Customer segment pivot, Customer need pivot, Platform pivot, and so on. Eric also explains how the normal metrics which he calls `vanity metrics' fail to show how a startup is performing and he comes with solutions of defining new metrics for the startup which takes into account the continuous innovation that a startup should perform. I loved the concepts of `MVP' - minimum viable product and `power of small batches' which allow companies to be agile and experiment quickly without committing too much resources.
Over the last 25 years of my career, I have been involved with over 20 startups in various capacities - Founder, Investor or Advisor. Though every startup has been a different challenge, there are many commonalities that run across them. And the doubts that plague each one of them are the same - are we doing the right thing? are we making progress? should we presevere with what we are doing or change strategy? The `Lean Startup Methodology' is an excellent tool, which I wish I had known before. It is not that some or most of the things that Eric mentions have not been executed by me or other entrepreneurs, but we lacked the scientific approach and process that would have enables us to plan and manage better.
We look at successful startups and often feel that those winners just happened to be at the right place at the right time. With many real life examples Eric shows it is not just luck. The successful ones were able to manage the startup well through many of the principles explained in the `Lean Startup Methodology' - whether consciously or not. Further, after you move past the startup phase, how do you continue to get the company to innovate and be agile? How can large companies foster entrepreneurship? Can the smart startup maintain the spirit of entrepreneurship? Eric thinks so and lays out his thoughts of how that can be achieved.
Some caveats on the book though - please note carefully how Eric defines the entrepreneur and the startup. There will be many businesses and organizational structures that will not match that. It does not mean the `Lean Startup Methodology' will not work for those - but it will have to modified and fine tuned. Similarly Eric's experiences and the examples he quotes are mostly from the high tech fields and hence the learnings may not be exactly applicable for many traditional industries. Lastly, the book assumes that the Startup is good in execution - which from my experience, is not often the case. The management team in most Startups will have many gaps - some of which they are not even aware of - which leads to serious problems as they try to execute. However there are many other books and large number of consultants who can help the startup to solve those problems.
If you are an entrepreneur or involved with a startup in any capacity - this book is a must read; you will not regret the investment of the time and cost. I commend Eric Ries for making a significant contribution to the field of scientific entrepreneurial management.
When I first received the book I was a little concerned that it would be more focused on brick and mortar businesses to the exclusion of internet and content type startups. However, Ries focuses on a variety of entrepreneurial situations from traditional, physical businesses to those only existent on the web. If you are operating a business or thinking about starting one, chances are Ries has addressed your situation in some capacity within the book's 290+ pages.
The Lean Startup is filled with technical information, but also interesting stories that back up the author's assertions. I like this model because it allowed me to see what he was talking about in a real world setting. I also appreciate his inclusive vision of entrepreneurship. For example, he thinks entrepreneur should be a job category in larger companies and goes on to address the needs of people who are in charge of starting new projects within big corporations.
In short, the lean startup model focuses on getting a minimum viable product to the market, then receiving customer feedback along the way to improve the product and pivot (take a new approach) if necessary. This, of course, is in contrast to the old way of doing business where a product is launched fully functional backed by extensive market research. This method can be successful, but it costs a lot of money, pivoting is difficult, and failure can harm the bottom line (think Microsoft Vista).
I'm starting my own business and found The Lean Startup incredibly helpful. It basically functions as a general "how to" book for the lean startup method. While everything wasn't equally helpful for me personally, his advice on minimum viable product, how to find the root of personnel failures, and the creation of meaningful metrics is priceless.
If you are starting a business or thinking about expanding one, I'd highly recommend this book. I know my business will be more successful because of it.
Suffice it to say, this book offers a way to build startups in a cost-effective way. Read more
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