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The “Lean Startup” is an essential book for those who want to create their own startup companies, or have an interest in entrepreneurship; anyone interested in quick product development and testing; founders, managers, and employees in tech companies.
Rather than wasting time formulating complicated business plans, this book offers entrepreneurs, in establishments of different sizes, a way to test their vision regularly, to adapt and adjust at the right time. Eric Ries, using real case studies from a wide array of different businesses, provides a scientific approach to building and managing successful startups in an era when companies need to innovate more than ever.
Key points
1
The first thing required in building or starting a business is management
For so many years, entrepreneurs have been unserious about the way they approach business management and business disciple. Those who take these practices seriously have approached them from an entirely wrong angle. These erroneous views often lead to chaos and failure.
We have more entrepreneurs now than in the past, and this is as a result of modern management and technology, which many firms have been unable to manage. Also, we do not have an orderly management example for new innovative ventures.
Root Cause is a concept that took its name from the lean manufacturing revolution that Taiichi and Shingo are credited with developing at Toyota. It is aimed towards differentiating between value creation and waste in terms of resources, time, passion, and skill of people, and how to build quality products from inside out thereby allowing entrepreneurs make testable predictions.
The lean startup adapts two ideas in the context of entrepreneurship and they are:
• Entrepreneurs judging their progress differently from ventures.
• Products of high-quality physical goods measure growth in manufacturing.
There is also the startup system scientific learning, which is called “validated learning”. With this, they discover and eliminate any source of waste.
Secondly, the lean startup method is designed to teach how to start a startup; it helps entrepreneurs adjust their plans with the Build-measure-learn feedback loop. This enables you to know when to make a stop or when to move ahead.
Vision is the bedrock of every entrepreneur, after which is the strategy. Where there are setbacks, it is an opportunity to learn what to do to get a better result. All entrepreneurs, whether big or small, have a common trait which is acquiring new customers and serving the existing ones, but the challenge lies between balancing both.
We have more entrepreneurs now than in the past, and this is as a result of modern management and technology, which many firms have been unable to manage. Also, we do not have an orderly management example for new innovative ventures.
Root Cause is a concept that took its name from the lean manufacturing revolution that Taiichi and Shingo are credited with developing at Toyota. It is aimed towards differentiating between value creation and waste in terms of resources, time, passion, and skill of people, and how to build quality products from inside out thereby allowing entrepreneurs make testable predictions.
The lean startup adapts two ideas in the context of entrepreneurship and they are:
• Entrepreneurs judging their progress differently from ventures.
• Products of high-quality physical goods measure growth in manufacturing.
There is also the startup system scientific learning, which is called “validated learning”. With this, they discover and eliminate any source of waste.
Secondly, the lean startup method is designed to teach how to start a startup; it helps entrepreneurs adjust their plans with the Build-measure-learn feedback loop. This enables you to know when to make a stop or when to move ahead.
Vision is the bedrock of every entrepreneur, after which is the strategy. Where there are setbacks, it is an opportunity to learn what to do to get a better result. All entrepreneurs, whether big or small, have a common trait which is acquiring new customers and serving the existing ones, but the challenge lies between balancing both.
2
Who, exactly, is an entrepreneur?
An entrepreneur is a person who works either with a government agency, a profit or non-profit company or with financial investors who creates a business or new products. They focus on the structure companies need to put in place to form startup teams.
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3
In a startup, learning is paramount for entrepreneurial innovation to survive
4
Experimentation is integral to the lean startup philosophy
5
The Build-Measure-Learn feedback loop is at the core of the Lean Startup model
6
First products are not meant to be perfect
7
Startups need a new kind of accounting geared especially toward disruptive innovation
8
Every entrepreneur eventually faces an overriding challenge in developing a successful product: deciding when to pivot and when to persevere
9
Lean Startups take advantage of the counterintuitive power of small batches
10
There are metrics startups should use to understand their growth as they add new customers and discover new markets
11
Investing in the right amount of process to keep teams nimble as they grow helps to build an adaptive organization
12
As startups grow into established companies, they face pressures that make it necessary to invest in disruptive innovation
13
As a movement, the Lean Startup must avoid doctrines and rigid ideology
14
