The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses by Eric Ries

Dec 26, 2012 Stephanie Sun rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: ebook, publishing-and-c-research

"The big question of our time is not Can it be built? but Should it be built?"

I wasn't too surprised to find that Eric Ries is a great writer: clear, intellectually honest, articulate, and good-humored.

As Ries readily admits in the Epilogue, the theories and frameworks promoted in this book have the danger of being used retroactively to justify what you did in the past, or what you've already decided that you want to do, no matter your industry. Its success no doubt has to do with its take cont...more

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Dec 27, 2012 George Wang added it

I originally came across this title here: http://addicted2success.com/success-a...

After hearing about the Lean Startup methodology time after time in the startup world, I decided to give this book a try. Although I've heard of the basics concepts like the Minimal Viable Product and the benefits of quick iterations, reading about the methodology in detail provided a lot more context to these concepts and helped me gave me the tools that I can use to put these concepts to action.

The biggest epipha...more

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May 03, 2013 Rick rated it 3 of 5 stars

This is a massively important book that turned out to be much harder to read than I expected, and left me still pretty confused about how to implement much of the advice in the book. But I like what it did to my thinking, even though I was familiar with many of the concepts in the book already.

But boy, I sure do like Five Whys. I am so ready to have kids.

There are some really wonderful simple quotes too:

"management is human systems engineering."

"Our productive capacity greatly exceeds our abil...more

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Mar 22, 2013 Jerry rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: business

This book explains the application of lean methods such as small batches, short cycle times, kanban, 5 whys, and Build-Measure-Learn feedback loop to starting a business.

I found part 1 of the book so weak that I almost quit. But parts 2 and 3 are more substantial, making the book worthwhile.

The author defines startup in a way that leaves out many new businesses. “A startup is a human institution designed to create a new product or service under conditions of extreme uncertainty.”

“For startups,...more

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Feb 24, 2013 Robert rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: business

If you are a small business owner then none of what this book covers comes as any great surprise. In essence keep costs down, continue to innovate and succeed through small increments. Such ideas are clearly novel to many larger businesses these days who have lost the reason for their existence. That is, to serve the customer.

That said this book is still a worthwhile read for many simply because it is mentioned in so many places these days. It does provided some benefit, even for small businesse...more

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Dec 06, 2012 Joe rated it 5 of 5 stars

I enter just about every "latest management fad" book with an air of skepticism but this one is legit. "The Lean Startup" is a book that outlines an approach to developing new products and businesses in a streamlined way that maximizes your chances for success. Adopted from the principles of lean manufacturing, the system that helped propel Japanese automakers to the forefront, Ries goes through and explicitly details how you can build products/features, measure the impact of what you have done,...more

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Nov 05, 2012 Lucinda rated it 4 of 5 stars

This fascinating, insightful and truly original book is a must-read for all entrepreneurs and corporations

This book gives a truly unique approach to business that is slowly being adopted throughout the world, for its effectiveness and positive outcomes. It explains about what customers really want, whilst testing your own current knowledge and understanding of any organization and business acumen. It tests your visual creativity and innovation, when it comes to thinking about the foundations th...more This fascinating, insightful and truly original book is a must-read for all entrepreneurs and corporations

This book gives a truly unique approach to business that is slowly being adopted throughout the world, for its effectiveness and positive outcomes. It explains about what customers really want, whilst testing your own current knowledge and understanding of any organization and business acumen. It tests your visual creativity and innovation, when it comes to thinking about the foundations that a business is built on and new product launches. This book makes you really think and learn, whilst changing ones own perceptions on innovation and entrepreneurship. Loaded with fascinating, interesting stories and practical principals, I would highly recommend this to any business owner or manager, director or executive as it is such a helpful read. If you are interested in innovation, using original and uniquely distinctive ideas that ‘break the trend’ to create a profound effect then please do read this book. One is given a guided tour of the key inventive practices used inside great giants such as Google, Toyota and Facebook that one can apply to their own business or way of thinking (such as for inspirational purposes).

This book written by entrepreneur Eric Ries and highly acclaimed author of the blog startup lessons learned, is a must read for all those interested in consumer, commercial business and capitalism. It delves into the ideals behind product strategies and the process that leads from one single idea to global, business dealings. It is clear that the author understands the success entrepreneurs aim to achieve and so offers his many years of extensive knowledge and experience to aid you in all your endeavors (regardless of the size of the business ect.). If you keep on seeking a better business model then soon enough one will eventually find something profitable and offerings. This book is also great for those with a web-based business, as its contents are directly applicable and also helpful to those who have not started a business before. Great for those new to business and those who are accustomed to make incremental improvements in existing, successesful businesses. This book is in-depth and brimmed full of helpful hints and advice that are not only helpful, but which gives one a different insight and viewpoint on the successful business.
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Apr 09, 2012 Andy Stager rated it 4 of 5 stars

I'm currently starting a new church as well as helping my wife run a bow tie business. This book is about entrepreneurship, and its examples mostly come from the software development industry. Nevertheless, there was much food for thought here.

Takeaways:

1. Put out a 'MVP'. As fast as possible, put out a 'minimum viable product' and see if anyone is willing to buy it. If you spend forever making the product the best it could possibly be, you may end up with a cool product that no one actually wa...more

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Mar 14, 2012 Chris Johnson rated it 4 of 5 stars

This was a nice book that talks as much about Silcon Valley style culture as anything else. A ton of my peers are in mid-career finance/law/govenrment jobs. The only way they stay for years is if there is some sort of inefficiency that keeps them there. The utility of the tasks they perform isn't much - at all.

I loved the ethos that Eric shares...When a new employee makes a mistake: "SHame on us for making it easy for you to fail." That type of accountability doesn't exist, we have a "punish th...more

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Jan 13, 2012 Scott rated it 4 of 5 stars

Useful, practical resource for organizations - both large and small - seeking a sustainable process for making the most efficient use of their time, money and attention. I recommended it to startup companies, which have limited resources and operating history and have yet to prove themselves, and particularly web and digital startups, which are best equipped to do the continuous testing, measuring and refining that the author calls for in the pursuit of building something that people want.

In a c...more Useful, practical resource for organizations - both large and small - seeking a sustainable process for making the most efficient use of their time, money and attention. I recommended it to startup companies, which have limited resources and operating history and have yet to prove themselves, and particularly web and digital startups, which are best equipped to do the continuous testing, measuring and refining that the author calls for in the pursuit of building something that people want.

In a clear, methodical manner, the author provides the framework for continual learning and innovation ("Build-Measure-Learn"), a new way of measuring whether true progress is being made ("innovation accounting" that is actionable, accessible and auditable) and how to decide whether to change or stay the course. By being rooted in terms of the rigorous scientific method, the Lean Startup movement seeks to ingrain accountability and adaptability into - as the author defines a startup - a "human institution designed to create new products and services under conditions of extreme uncertainty."

Still, while the "Lean Startup" movement makes a lot of sense on its face and seems simple enough, its effectiveness for building successful startups depends on the execution and interpretation of its tenets. For example, for a given product, the features that one person might consider necessary to create a "minimum viable product" might be different from what another person thinks. It's only through experience, discipline and self-awareness that one will be able to create a startup that is not only lean, but successful in the long run.

Having read the entire book - which is not that "lean" at almost 300 pages - I'd suggest new readers to skim the entire book, and then revisit and closely examine the parts that are the most relevant. It's a credit to the author that he concludes that "the Lean Startup must avoid doctrines and rigid ideology," and I think the best way to honor that is by adapting the lessons in the book to the realities of the business environment.(less)

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Dec 25, 2011 Jevgeni Holodkov rated it 3 of 5 stars

This book is mostly a theoretical essay (though with a lot of examples) on how to apply "lean" ideas to startups and its execution. The main idea of this book is to follow and focus on (!) "build-measure-learn" loop when you run startup (or, actually, do anything). It basically means that we need not just do and learn, but rather do, learn and make sure we really learned something new. It is achieved with giving a claim (hypotesis setting) and testing that by checking clear metrics. If you knew,...more

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Nov 15, 2011 Herve rated it 3 of 5 stars

After reading Clayton Christensen, Geoffrey Moore and Steve Blank, I was expecting a lot from The Lean Startup by Eric Ries. I was disappointed. It could be that I did not read it well or too fast, but I was expecting much more. But instead of saying what I did not like, let me begin with the good points. Just like the previous three authors, Ries shows that innovation may be totally counterintuitive: "My cofounders and I are determined to make new mistakes. We do everything wrong. We build a mi...more After reading Clayton Christensen, Geoffrey Moore and Steve Blank, I was expecting a lot from The Lean Startup by Eric Ries. I was disappointed. It could be that I did not read it well or too fast, but I was expecting much more. But instead of saying what I did not like, let me begin with the good points. Just like the previous three authors, Ries shows that innovation may be totally counterintuitive: "My cofounders and I are determined to make new mistakes. We do everything wrong. We build a minimum viable product, an early product that is terrible, full of bugs and crash-your-computer-yes-really stability problems. Then we ship it to customers before it's ready. And we charge money for it. After securing initial customers, we change the product constantly. [...] We really had customers, often talked to them and did not do what they said." [page 4] On page 8, Eric Ries explains that the lean startup method helps entrepreneurs "under conditions of extreme uncertainty" with a "new kind of management" by "testing each element of their vision", and "learn whether to pivot or persevere" using a "feedback loop".

This is he Build-Measure-Learn process. He goes on by explaining why start-ups fail:
1- The first problem is the allure of a good plan. "Planning and forecasting are only accurate when based on a long, stable operating history and a relatively static environment. Startups have neither."
2- The second problem is the "Just-do-it". "This school believes that chaos is the answer. This does not work either. A startup must be managed".
The main and most convincing lesson from Ries is that because start-ups face a lot of uncertainty, they should test, experiment, learn from the right or wrong hypotheses as early and as often as possible. They should use actionable metrics, split-test experiments, innovation accounting. He is also a big fan of Toyota lean manufacturing.

I loved his borrowing of Komisar's Analogs and Antilogs. For the iPod, the Sony Walkman was an Analog ("people listen to music in a public place using earphones") and Napster was an Antilog ("although people were willing to download music, they were not willing to pay for it"). [Page 83] Ries further develops the MVP, Minimum Viable Product: "it is not the smallest product imaginable, but the fastest way to get through the Build-Measure-Learn feedback loop." Apple's original iPhone, Google's first search engine, or even Dropbox Video Demo were such MVPs. More on Techcrunch [page 97]. He adds that MVP does not go without risks, including legal issues, competition, branding and morale of the team. He has a good point about intellectual property [page 110]: "In my opinion, [...the] current patent law inhibits innovation and should be remedied as a matter of public policy."

So why did I feel some frustration? There is probably the feeling Ries gives that his method is a science. [Page 3]: "Startup success can be engineered by following the right process, which means it can be learned, which means it can be taught." [Page 148]: "Because of the scientific methodology that underlies the Lean Startup, there is often a misconception that it offers a rigid clinical formula for making pivot or persevere decisions. There is no way to remove the human element - vision, intuition, judgment - from the practice of entrepreneurship, nor that would be desirable". I was probably expecting more recipes, as the ones Blnak gives in The Four Steps to the Epiphany. So? Art or science? Ries explains on page 161 that pivot requires courage. "First, Vanity Metrics can allow to form false conclusions. [...] Second, an unclear hypothesis makes it impossible to experience complete failure, [...] Third, many entrepreneurs are afraid. Acknowledging failure can lead to dangerously low morale." A few pages before (page 154), he writes that "failure is a prerequisite to learning". Ries describes a systematic method, I am not sure it is a science, not even a process. Indeed, in his concluding chapter, as if he wanted to mitigate his previous arguments, he tends to agree: "the real goal of innovation: to learn that which is currently unknown" [page 275]. "Throughout our celebration of the Lean Startup movement, a note of caution is essential. We cannot afford to have our success breed a new pseudoscience around pivots, MVPs, and the like" [page 279]. This in no way diminishes the traditional entrepreneurial virtues; the primacy of vision, the willingness to take bold risks, and the courage required in the face of overwhelming odds" [page 278].

Let me mention here a video from Komisar. Together with Moore and Blank, he is among the ones who advise reading Ries' book. I am less convinced than them about the necessity to read this book. I have now more questions than answers, but this may be a good sign! I have been more frustrated than enlightened by the anecdotes he gives or his use of the Toyota strategy. In na interview given to the Stanford Venture Technology program, Komisar talks about how to teach entrepreneurship. Listen to him!

To be fair, Eric Ries is helping a lot the entrepreneurship movement. I just discovered a new set of videos he is a part of, thanks to SpinkleLab. Fred Destin had also a great post on his blog about the Lean Startup and you should probably read it too to build your own opinion. Lean is hard and (generally) good for you. Fred summaries Lean this way and he is right: "In the real world, most companies do too much development and spend too much money too early (usually to hit some pre-defined plan that is nothing more than a fantasy and / or is not where they need to go to succeed) and find themselves with an impossible task of raising money at uprounds around Series B. So founders get screwed and everyone ends up with a bad taste in their mouth. That's fundamentally why early stage capital efficiency should matter to you, and why you should at least understand lean concepts."

Let me finish with a recent interview given by Steve Blank in Finland:
I have devoted the last decade of my life and my “fourth career” to trying to prove that methods for improving entrepreneurial success can be taught. Entrepreneurship itself is more of a genetic phenomenon. Either you have the passion and drive to start something, or you don’t. I believe entrepreneurs are artists, and I’d like to quote George Bernard Shaw to illustrate:
"Some men see things as they are and ask why.
Others dream things that never were and ask why not."
Over the last decade we assumed that once we found repeatable methodologies (Agile and Customer Development, Business Model Design) to build early stage ventures, entrepreneurship would become a “science,” and anyone could do it. I’m beginning to suspect this assumption may be wrong. It’s not that the tools are wrong. Where I think we have gone wrong is the belief that anyone can use these tools equally well.
When page-layout programs came out with the Macintosh in 1984, everyone thought it was going to be the end of graphic artists and designers. “Now everyone can do design,” was the mantra. Users quickly learned how hard it was do design well and again hired professionals. The same thing happened with the first bit-mapped word processors. We didn’t get more or better authors. Instead we ended up with poorly written documents that looked like ransom notes. Today’s equivalent is Apple’s “Garageband”. Not everyone who uses composition tools can actually write music that anyone wants to listen to.
It may be we can increase the number of founders and entrepreneurial employees, with better tools, more money, and greater education. But it’s more likely that until we truly understand how to teach creativity, their numbers are limited. Not everyone is an artist, after all."(less)

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Nov 13, 2011 Adam Bradley rated it 3 of 5 stars

I think this book could have been effectively distilled into one of about a fifth the length -- and provided me with a much faster feedback loop on the ideas it contained. So consider that an example of the author not abiding by his own principles.

Another example of the book not abiding by its own counsel: in recounting case studies, he assures us that the case studies are "successful" by telling us about venture funding and acquisition offers, which seem to me to be examples of the ultimate "va...more

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Nov 03, 2011 Nick Brown rated it 4 of 5 stars

I suspect this book will go down in history as a classic in the business literature.

For those who don't know, the Lean Startup movement is about simply put not wasting people's time. Eric Ries argues that many entrepreneurs and their enterprises are wasteful - they make products and services nobody wants to use. The Lean Startup is the intellectual framework where bout entrepreneurs can reduce the amount of waste they are generated in unwanted products and services.

The crux of the Lean Startup...more

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Oct 27, 2011 Ismail Elshareef rated it 5 of 5 stars

I started reading Eric Ries's blog, "Startup Lessons Learned," back in October 2008. I was quickly impressed by his technical acumen and the simplicity of his writing. I also enjoyed the breadth of topics covered and how engaging they were.

Needless to say, I was glad to hear that he was going to distill all his knowledge into a book, and now that I read the book, I'm glad to say that he didn't disappoint.

The book defines a startup as a 1) a human institution designed to 2) create a new product/s...more I started reading Eric Ries's blog, "Startup Lessons Learned," back in October 2008. I was quickly impressed by his technical acumen and the simplicity of his writing. I also enjoyed the breadth of topics covered and how engaging they were.

Needless to say, I was glad to hear that he was going to distill all his knowledge into a book, and now that I read the book, I'm glad to say that he didn't disappoint.

The book defines a startup as a 1) a human institution designed to 2) create a new product/service under conditions of 3) extreme uncertainty.

Notice how the definition doesn't address the size of the venture or its backers or its origins. As long as it is a team building a product with high uncertainty, it is a startup.

Eric puts a huge emphasis on "validated learning" as opposed to "failure as a way of learning." He says, "a failure to deliver results is due to either a failure to plan adequately or a failure to execute properly." He's all about accountability, which is sorely lacking in so many institutions these day, with the most egregious being Wall Street.

Eric goes on to explain the principles of the lean startup with andecodotes of successes and failures in business. One of the most fascinating and very telling for me was the SnapTax story. The fact that a giant company like Intuit could spawn an innovative startup (i.e. a team + a product + high uncertainty) was a nice validation for my unsuccessful push for an R&D department within the companies at which I worked in the past. SnapTax was a team of five individuals that was given freedom to experiement while held accountable throughout the process. The results were impresssive.

If nothing else, the reader, especially those running mature companies, should pay close attention to Eric's conclusion. He stresses the points of validating assumptions, rapid testing of ideas, and most importantly, "stop wasting people's time."

I think that's the most valuable lesson in the entire book. Mature companies that continue to waste their talents' time with banal and insipid tasks are bound to lose those talents and will only be left with lazy, oftentime overpaid individuals that are too comfortable, too politically secure that they can't produce anything new or original even if they tried.

Startups are a "human institution" first and foremost. If the right team isn't in place, you do not have a startup. Nurture those talents and don't waste their time. Only then will the trappings of success adorn your business and you.(less)

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Oct 13, 2011 Jignesh Shah rated it 4 of 5 stars

A good introduction to the Lean Startup approach to building and launching products for new markets. This book draws upon numerous works that have addressed the dynamics of new markets, discovering what customers really want, fact-based decision making and lean manufacturing. What is interesting is the way Lean Startup brings these ideas together into a cohesive and powerful framework. A framework built around a fundamental insight: building a new products for a new market should be considered a...more A good introduction to the Lean Startup approach to building and launching products for new markets. This book draws upon numerous works that have addressed the dynamics of new markets, discovering what customers really want, fact-based decision making and lean manufacturing. What is interesting is the way Lean Startup brings these ideas together into a cohesive and powerful framework. A framework built around a fundamental insight: building a new products for a new market should be considered a high risk experiment. Or rather, a series of experiments that successively prove (or disprove) whether we are building products that customers actually want. So, make assumptions explicit, test them vigorously, learn, repeat. Iterate through this loop as quickly as possible by deploying cross functional teams that build the product in small batches.

I have launched new products at startups and established companies. I have lived through the dysfunction of silo-ed teams guessing what customers want and then investing in long development cycles before they find out the truth, if ever. So personally, I find Lean Startup ideas appealing and at least worth attempting.

Teams that have gone through the process of adopting agile and lean for software engineering will recognize many of the rationales and principles laid out on this book. They will also realize that they implemented those principles too narrowly to be truly effective. Limiting lean and agile practices to just product engineering does not solve the dysfunction in other areas that are equally important for market success.

My concern is whether this approach will doom teams to only make small incremental improvements that can be readily tested. Will it stifle intuition and courage to make big, bold decisions? Will 'let's test it' become a crutch for people who don't have the guts to make a call based on incomplete information (and information needed for big decisions will always be incomplete)? Time will tell. The Lean Startup movement is still in it's early days.

I should point out that the book lacks specific ideas on how to implement the Lean Startup approach. The book has several high level stories, but very few methods, techniques and practices that can be readily implemented. This can be a bit frustrating if you are trying to imagine what Lean Startup ideas look like in action. Ries explains why specifics are missing at the very end of the book. The Lean Startup approach itself is an experiment! It is in its early stages and there is a lot of learning needed to implement it in a repeatable fashion. Further, the emphasis on learning means that any existing method should be continuously questioned, improved or even transformed. Ries says he does not want the movement to be reduced to a set of prescribed methods and tactics. Instead, he recommends joining a community of practitioners to learn how to implement Lean Startup ideas.

Another ding against this book is a chapter on how established companies can nurture innovation. Ries feels out of his element on this topic. He puts forth a series of that are either vague or akin to motherhood and apple pie. But it doesn't matter. Because this book is really for technology start-ups. And for them it does put forth some truly insightful ideas that will make any entrepreneur pause and reconsider the traditional approach.
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Oct 05, 2011 Nathan rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: business

I've been following Eric Ries's writing on the "lean startup" idea for a while now. I remember speaking to him at the Gov 2.0 conference a few years ago, and saying "look, I get what you're saying, but how can you be sure it's not just you extrapolating from your successes?". He said then, "yes, I know, every business writer seems to do that, but I don't claim to have found a universal rule, it's just something that worked for me and might work for you." Somewhere between then and now, Eric made...more I've been following Eric Ries's writing on the "lean startup" idea for a while now. I remember speaking to him at the Gov 2.0 conference a few years ago, and saying "look, I get what you're saying, but how can you be sure it's not just you extrapolating from your successes?". He said then, "yes, I know, every business writer seems to do that, but I don't claim to have found a universal rule, it's just something that worked for me and might work for you." Somewhere between then and now, Eric made up his mind: it is a universal rule and it will work for you.

We are just beginning to uncover the rules that govern entrepreneurship, a method that can improve the odds of startup success, and a systematic approach to building new and innovative products.

ORLY?

Leaving my skepticism about his assertive confidence aside (after all, diffidence rarely sold a business book), the book itself is fantastic. He has succeeded in finding a coherent story, with useful messages, and tells it well. I recognised some portions from his blog but the best differentiation of text is between the stuff that reads really well and the stuff that doesn't. I found myself going, "I bet he's told that story a lot of times!" at parts which were extremely well put together. Then, in other places, I was grinding my teeth at the easy and (dare I suggest) lazy use of buzzwords.

Personally, I was worried that the low quality of the product would tarnish my reputation as an engineer. People would think I didn’t know how to build a quality product. All of us feared tarnishing the IMVU brand; after all, we were charging people money for a product that didn’t work very well. We all envisioned the damning newspaper headlines: “Inept Entrepreneurs Build Dreadful Product.”

then—nothing happened! It turned out that our fears were unfounded, because nobody even tried our product. At first I was relieved because at least nobody was finding out how bad the product was, but soon that gave way to serious frustration. After all the hours we had spent arguing about which features to include and which bugs to fix, our value proposition was so far off that customers weren’t getting far enough into the experience to find out how bad our design choices were. Customers wouldn’t even download our product.

The good news was that we were on a hockey-stick-shaped growth curve. The bad news was that the hockey stick went up to only about $8,000 per month of revenue. These numbers were so low that we’d often have investors ask us, “What are the units on these charts? Are those numbers in thousands?” We’d have to reply, “No, sir, those are in ones.”

What do I mean by lazy use of cliche? A sentence like this: Today successful companies face immediate pressure from new competitors, fast followers, scrappy startups makes me twitch. "Fast followers" are what we used to call "imitators" before they got their own alliterative name, and "scrappy" is an unnecessary piece of journalese: would a successful company have much to worry about from a "complacent" startup or even an alliterative "sluggish startup"?

But, curmudgeoning aside, the book is good. Read it. I particularly liked the dig into value and growth hypotheses. I'm going to be thinking on those for a while. But that's me, a far from fast follower of infelicitious or nigh fallacious limp diction.(less)

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Sep 28, 2012 Graham Brown rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: barefootjournal-com-recommended-rea

Keep it Lean

The "Lean Startup" is the application of lean thinking to the process of innovation in startup companies — defined as a type of business where both the problem (customer need) and the solution (product) are unknown. Traditional product development efforts often invest millions of dollars and years of time into one fixed product concept that is assumed to meet known customer needs — creating a high level of risk that the "waste of overproduction" occurs and creating a product that cus...more

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Oct 24, 2011 Tom Randle rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: business

It's a good book, and if everyone read and understood it I'm sure companies would be far more efficient at innovating.

I felt some of the messages could have been made clearer by improving the style of the book. There are a few too many terms like "Engines of Growth" that cloud some of the meaning. My biggest criticism would be many of the anecdotes didn't really do justice to the points Eric would later made.

Unlike many management books that hammer home their point page after page, The Lean Sta...more

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Feb 27, 2012 M Sheik Uduman Ali rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is a MUST have book for every entrepreneur and good choice for software start-ups. And of course, the advises from this book also applicable for corporate software projects.

Eric Ries talks not just money and serve customers. He taught how to build sustainable business.

This book gives you many surprises on our current culture, particulallrly productivity.

It clearly mentions "start up is a human enterprise".

Instead of giving theory, He suggests to use techniques that will work with unique cir...more

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Jan 16, 2012 Violetta rated it 5 of 5 stars

Whether you run a business, or dream about having one in the future, make time to read this book. Basing on personal experience of failure and success, experiment and innovation, Eric Ries introduces a new approach to managing in the context of complexity and uncertainty.
This approach is based on the belief that startup mastery can be learned and implemented by any entrepreneur. Blending together insights and learnings derived from lean manufacturing, agile development, design thinking, custome...more Whether you run a business, or dream about having one in the future, make time to read this book. Basing on personal experience of failure and success, experiment and innovation, Eric Ries introduces a new approach to managing in the context of complexity and uncertainty.
This approach is based on the belief that startup mastery can be learned and implemented by any entrepreneur. Blending together insights and learnings derived from lean manufacturing, agile development, design thinking, customer development, Ries comes up with a scheme that works and brings success to startups.

What I like the most about the book and the approach is its “waste not” philosophy. With its clear-cut principles, the Lean Startup method is an Occam's Razor for startups. Eliminate waste, escalate learning. Go with “eternal beta” and ship your product fast, drop assumptions and ask the customers what they really think. Learn your lessons, integrate, and realease a new, more advanced, version of the product. Learning, when it is derived and applied wisely, brings more customer satisfaction and, eventually, more growth and profit.

The idea that learning and customer feedback are crucial for startups is at the core of the approach. What matters is not how fast you grow, but how fast you learn and adapt to the real needs of the customer. Validated learning and innovation accounting - two of the five pillars of the Lean Startup approach - emphasize the importance of being open for the novelty of feedback, being able to rapidly change direction, and having the inner drive for discovery.

In some ways, this approach is strict and process-oriented. Yet, the Lean Startup method leaves space for intuition and gut feeling of the manager, who must decide when it is time to persevere and when it is time to change direction. In this light, the Learn Startup is not only a method, it is an attitude, a world outlook based on the above mentioned mantra - “waste not”. As such, it can be transferred to other fields – education, public policy, creativy, and life in general.

I find this book well-written and easy to understand, even if you do not have management background. The website (www.theleanstartup.com) is the best place to start and get a glimpse of the approach. (less)

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Jun 03, 2012 Brad rated it 5 of 5 stars

Phenomenal book! It is definitely a must-read for anyone that is interested in starting a company or organization that is trying to provide value to the world. The initial gut reaction of many people is that the book's recommendations go completely against common sense; Eric Ries suggests to release products and feature that are no where near 'perfect'. However, in the end, you realize how much sense there is behind his ideas. Why release or build something that no one is interested? Don't waste...more

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Mar 30, 2012 Fran Toolan rated it 3 of 5 stars

Like most business books, the gems are embedded in the fluff. As someone who has run self (and under) funded startup companies for a very long time, it was good to see put into text what I've been doing all these years.

But, being under funded, and hence always seemingly on the verge of failure, we had no choice but to employ the tactics given here. We always had to generate some kind of income to keep going, so we couldn't afford to wait for perfect. We delivered the best we could, and innovated...more Like most business books, the gems are embedded in the fluff. As someone who has run self (and under) funded startup companies for a very long time, it was good to see put into text what I've been doing all these years.

But, being under funded, and hence always seemingly on the verge of failure, we had no choice but to employ the tactics given here. We always had to generate some kind of income to keep going, so we couldn't afford to wait for perfect. We delivered the best we could, and innovated where ever possible. We had to stay very close to our customers and build strong relationships with them in order to earn their forgiveness for a less than perfect product.

There were two key take aways for me, that I'm grateful for, and will implement immediately, and one piece that I think Mr. Ries missed completely.

The first key take away relates to the concept of testing assumptions. Hell, we never even thought about what our assumptions were! So, simply stating them and figuring out how to measure our results is one of those "blinding flashes of the obvious" that I'm grateful the author brought to light.

The second key take away is how systematically, these tactics can be applied in a mature organization. It's one thing to do this when the wolf is consistently at the door, but it's quite another when the company has gotten past that stage.

The piece that I think Mr. Ries doesn't discuss (and maybe the subject of a following book) has to do with when a product scales. I wish the author would talk more about the price that piper eventually extracts from a startup, once their product takes off. Often times, especially in software, it usually means a complete re-write of the product, using a different architecture that doesn't take short cuts, and can handle volume and performance issues. Getting a product to market quickly is very important, and reduced, streamlined features are very critical to that. But, most consumers don't see (nor care about) the infrastructure necessary to build and support that product. At some point, the startup has a big price to pay to be able to scale their product for it's maximum value.

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Apr 28, 2013 Erika RS rated it 3 of 5 stars

The key idea of The Lean Startup is that a successful startup[1] needs to optimizes for learning. It doesn't matter how quickly something is being built if it's the wrong thing.

I saw this book as having two big ideas. First, the goal of a startup should be to move as quickly as possible through the Build-Measure-Learn cycle[2]. Because of this, he emphasizes the tool of the min viable product. Any team working under uncertainty should start by forming a hypothesis about their value proposition....more The key idea of The Lean Startup is that a successful startup[1] needs to optimizes for learning. It doesn't matter how quickly something is being built if it's the wrong thing.

I saw this book as having two big ideas. First, the goal of a startup should be to move as quickly as possible through the Build-Measure-Learn cycle[2]. Because of this, he emphasizes the tool of the min viable product. Any team working under uncertainty should start by forming a hypothesis about their value proposition. They should then build the minimum product that they think could deliver on that value (or perhaps just part of it). Once this is in front of customers, the team should measure the impact of the min viable product and integrate what they learned from that into building a next min viable product (which may build on the first or may be completely different).

This approach feeds directly into the second big theme of the book: effective measurement. Many startups measure their success based on what Ries calls vanity metrics -- overall usage numbers that are not clearly related to any particular change. The danger of vanity metrics is that they conflate multiple factors. Is the user base growing because of the new feature you added or an advertising campaign? Even more dangerous is that these metrics may not be measuring the values that drive the growth model for the startup. If the number of signed-up users is what is being measured but it's the number of 7-day actives that drives success, a team getting lots of signups for users that never come back may think it's succeeding when it's actually failing.

Two tools for dealing with the metrics problem both take advantage of slicing the space to be measured. General product metrics should be divided up by cohort. Which cohorts to split on depends on what is being measured, but common ones are time based (e.g., signed up within the last month vs old users) or account state based (e.g., free vs paying users).

Slicing by cohort provides more insight into how users are behaving, but it still doesn't provide fine grained answers to the question of what is causing a particular change. To deal with that, changes should be rolled out as experiments, and the behavior of the different experiment groups compared against each other. If a team hypothesizes that a certain feature will increase engagement among new users, release the feature to half the new users and see whether or not engagement increases. Experimentation is most valuable when it is the default, so this may require a culture shift.

Overall, I found this book interesting although not deeply surprising[3]. Even without finding a lot to surprise me, I did still find value in the application of measurement and targeted iteration to a business model.

[1] This book defines a startup as any team trying to build a product quickly under uncertainty. Thus, a team within a large company trying to break into a new market may benefit from the techniques discussed in this book -- and later in the book, Ries gives some tips on how to allow such teams more startup-like freedom while still integrating them into the larger company.

[2] Uh oh. Aren't cycles a warning signal that we're about to go into the land of hand waving business pseudo-science? If they're not true cycles, yes, but in this case, Ries makes it clear how this is a true cycle where each step really does feed again into the next.

[3] I did spend some time working on an experiment platform within Google Analytics, so my experience may not be typical. (less)

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Mar 09, 2012 Emir rated it 3 of 5 stars

As Reis's The Lean Startup has inspired a movement by which many contemporary product managers in the software industry swear by, I started reading The Lean Startup with high expectations.

You would be right to infer from a three-star review that The Lean Startup met those expectations for me only marginally. Why?

Whenever my high school literature class evaluated a book, the professor asked the class to always consider these three criteria: theme, idea, and style. I find using this framework help...more

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Jun 16, 2012 Stephen Mullins rated it 3 of 5 stars

This book is a quick read describing a method of running projects as startups. I found it easy to read and understand the author's points for each chapter. I enjoyed the emphasis on iteration and learning for project development, particularly the explanation of learning metrics versus vanity metrics. There is a lot of great advice in this book regarding the startup.

Where I think this book falls a little short for me is in how to apply the concepts of this book to succeed. I felt like there's mor...more

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Nov 04, 2011 John rated it 4 of 5 stars

While I'm giving this a 4 star, I really want it to be a 3 and a half.

4 because it's very motivating and there's a lot of valuable techniques in there, especially around metrics, different businesses' engines of growth, and running effective retrospective/5 whys meetings.

3 because it suffers from a lot of the "business bedside story" effect (see the halo effect for what that means) and there's a pretty nasty survivor bias, a lot of not quite scientific papers are quoted, and some of the "succes...more

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Nov 12, 2012 Cole Hoover rated it 4 of 5 stars

Glad I finally picked this one up after the deluge of hype I had been getting. It was a very good book, with some very pragmatic advice for entrepreneurs of all types. For me the biggest take away was that learning(for a business) is extremely important, especially when that learning is tied to a strong methodology for acquiring it. For the most part the preferred methodology for learning as stated by the authors was to just get it(your product) out there. Create what they call the MVP(minimum v...more

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Jan 20, 2013 Bibhu rated it 5 of 5 stars

Let me come straight to the point.This book is must for you, if you want to understand the process of starting an enterprise.As the author says, with so much advancement in technology and skill sets, it is not a question of whether a product can be built or not.The real question is whether the product should be built.Does the human endeavor that applies to the product/enterprise building justify the effort and time spent in building the product/enterprise?

A sustainable business starts when you h...more Let me come straight to the point.This book is must for you, if you want to understand the process of starting an enterprise.As the author says, with so much advancement in technology and skill sets, it is not a question of whether a product can be built or not.The real question is whether the product should be built.Does the human endeavor that applies to the product/enterprise building justify the effort and time spent in building the product/enterprise?

A sustainable business starts when you have the guts to listen to your customers and then Pivot, if you see that the initial strategy is not working.Starting an enterprise in today's world requires a paradigm shift which is to listen to the end users who would be using the product day in and day out.But how do you listen to them?This book argues that customers really do not know what they need until you show them what they need.So the secret is to rapid prototype,deploy continuously and have your prototypes tested by the early adapters. According to this book,start with a MVP(Minimum Viable Product),build on it after getting feedback from customers and you would be on your way to a great product.But this goes against the age old principles of starting a business which encourages a clear plan,a market research and a fully functional product to start with.The book suggests that many start ups fail, because they try to fit the classic age old management principles to the new age enterprise development which is like fitting a square peg to a circular hole.

This book gives you tools and techniques to understand how to build a great product. Start up science is not about going against the processes and metrics.It is about knowing the right process to follow and the right metrics to measure to understand the progress of a start up.The author provides a framework of BML(Build-Measure-Learn) for all entrepreneurs which not only will help any existing business but also will be an invaluable companion for any entrepreneur who is thinking of starting a great enterprise.

The only problem with this book which I felt is, it should have given some more case studies from any manufacturing industry where this principle is largely used and have been very successful. Most of the case studies are from Internet industry or from software industry.Also the book could have been little more structured. But it was all the way fun and very enlightening.

The current world needs Agile way of working,Actionable metrics for measuring the progress and validated learning for continuous enhancements.
Be Lean to stay ahead of the race.
Highly recommended.(less)

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Dec 19, 2012 Veso Mitev rated it 5 of 5 stars

Very good book.

It describes one of the greatest faults of our human minds which can lead to failure in many ventures (aka startups). Our bias.

It gives valuable advice on how we can work so we base our work in real world data, thus reduce our bias to a minimum level.

Basically Mr Ries shows a methodology where we can test our ideas and hypothesis, then improve them until we are satisfied, before we go "all in", invest a bunch of time, money and emotions just to find out the whole thing was flawed...more

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