1. The Lean Start-Up
Eric Reis
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 an age when companies need to innovate more than
ever.
Minimum Viable Product = MVP
Most start-ups fail
Most new products are not successful
Most new ventures do not live up to their potential
Start-up success can be engineered by following the right process which means it
can be learned, which means it can be taught.
Instead of spending years perfecting our technology, we build a minimum
viable product, an early product that is terrible, full of bugs and crash-on-your-
computer stability problems. Then we ship it to customers way before it’s ready.

2. And we charge money for it. After securing initial customers, we change the
product constantly – much too fast by traditional standards – shipping new version
of our products dozens of time every single day.
We did have customers in those early days – true visionary early adopters –
and we often talked to them and asked them for their feedback. But we did not
do what they said. We viewed their input as only one source of information
about our product and overall vision. In fact, we were much more likely to run
experiments on our customers than we were to cater to their whims.
The Lean Startup builds upon many previous management and product
development ideas representing a new approach to creating continuous innovation.
 lean manufacturing: originated in Japan with Toyota manufacturing
 design thinking
 customer development
 agile development
The Lean Startup is characterized by
 extremely fast cycle time
 a focus on what customers want (without asking them)
 a scientific approach to making decisions
The Lean Startup: the application of lean thinking to the process of innovation
Steve Blank, investor and advisor to IMVU believes:
The business and marketing functions of a startup should be considered as
important as engineering and product development and therefore deserve an
equally rigorous methodology to guide them.
He called this methodology Customer Development.
The Lean Startup Method:
1: Entrepreneurs are everywhere. The concept of entrepreneurship includes
anyone who works within Eric Reis’s definition of a startup: a human institution
designed to create new products and services under conditions of extreme

3. uncertainty. This means entrepreneurs are everywhere and can work in any size
company, in any sector or industry.
2: Entrepreneurship is management. A startup is an institution, not just a
product, and so it requires a new kind of management specifically geared to its
context of extreme uncertainty.
3: Validated learning. Startups exist not just to make stuff, make money, or
even serve customers. They exist to learn how to build a sustainable business. This
learning can be validated scientifically by running frequent experiments that
allow entrepreneurs to test each element of their vision.
4: Build – Measure – Learn. The fundamental activity of a startup is to turn
ideas into products, measure how customers respond, and the learn whether to
pivot or persevere. All successful startup processes should be geared to accelerate
that feedback loop.
5: Innovation accounting. To improve entrepreneurial outcomes and hold
innovators accountable, we need to focus on the boring stuff: how to measure
progress, how to set up milestones, and how to prioritize work.
Because startups operate with too much uncertainty, they do not know who
their customer is or what their product should be. Old management methods are
not up to the task. Planning and forecasting are only accurate when based on a long,
stable operating history and a relatively static environment. Startups have neither.
The overwhelming temptation is to apply a good plan, a solid strategy and thorough
market research – these are likely indicators of success in earlier eras.
The Lean Startup looks at:
VISION: identifies who is an entrepreneur, defines a startup, and articulate a new way
for startups to gauge if they are making progress, called VALIDATED LEARNING.

4. Startups can use scientific experimentation to discover how to build a sustainable
business.
STEER: dives into the Lean Startup model in details:
- Build – Measure – Learn feedback loop
- beginning with leap-of-faith assumptions that cry out for rigorous testing
- learning to build a minimum viable product to test those assumptions
- implementing a new accounting system for evaluating whether you’re making
progress and a method for deciding whether to pivot or persevere
STEER:
constantly changing
visionary early adopters
one source of input
ran experiments on their customers versus
design thinking
lean manufacturing
agile development
at Invu
focus on what customer want, without asking them
origins of the lean start up