The Lean Startup

“Making the intangible tangible.”

Tony Fadell sums up the lean startup methodology in his book Build. As Fadell continues in that chapter, he talks about the importance of the boring management components and thoroughly planning for your business vision and all aspects involved (Fadell, 2022, pp. 95–106). Eric Ries also stresses the importance of a marriage between entrepreneurship and management. To succeed, you must manage your entrepreneurial vision while empathizing with your customers (Ries, 2011, pp. 15–18). The lean startup methodology is the quickest and one of the cheapest ways to start your business vision in the right direction and get validation quickly.

The Lean Startup Process

The lean startup is an overarching methodology built from several project management ideas, such as lean manufacturing, design thinking, customer development, and agile development. This entire startup process has five main principles. Those principles are as follows: Entrepreneurs are everywhere and come in many forms. Entrepreneurship is management; to have a successful business, you must also do the boring things. Your learning needs to be validated. Run experiments frequently to validate and know you are headed in the right direction. Finally, innovative and applicable accounting specifically for startups. This accounting includes measuring progress, creating milestones, and prioritizing work (Pothaar, 2013). Reis clumped his book into three sections; it was genius because it made his methodology much more digestible. The three sections are vision, steer, and accelerate (Reis, 2011).

Vision

Like many business processes, the lean startup starts with a vision. With that vision, you do four different things: you start, define, learn, and experiment. That vision makes many want to begin immediately; this methodology allows you to do just that. This first phase is vital because curtailing your vision shows the direction you need to go. Once your vision is ironed out, the next phase, which Eric Ries titles steer in his book, The Lean Startup (Ries, 2011, pp. 13–72).

Steer

As Ries continues into the second phase of his book, steer, he discusses several essential parts of this phase. Those four items are leap, test, measure, pivot, or persevere. To continue down the path to success, your business idea needs to be validated, and the best way to do that is by user testing. Validation can look very different depending on your business and the product needed. It can be as simple as a conversation, a survey, testing a physical sample product, or testing a user flow with a digital mockup (Ries, 2011, pp. 78–178).

Accelerate

The final phase of The Learn Startup is titled Accelerate. The four key topics during this phase are batch, grow, adapt, and innovate. Ries discusses the power of creating and shipping in small batches. I have worked in companies that have called these milestones or features, but unlike Reis, they never stressed that the size needed to be small. He also stressed the constant need for testing for validation to continue growth and recognize what type of growth your business uses. To be a successful startup and use this process effectively, your business must adapt and innovate by leaning into what makes your idea unique and disruptive (Ries, 2011, pp. 179–271).

Build-Measure-Learn Feedback Loop

Within the five pillars of the lean startup methodology is an essential iterative loop called the build-measure-learn feedback loop. The start of this loop is build; you create a product to give or show to customers to get validation and feedback. The next step is measuring; this part aims to collect data on customer response. Learning from that response is critical once you have collected customer responses because it will be apparent if you need to pivot or persevere. Either way, you are starting over in the loop to iterate more, thus growing your product (Pothaar, 2013; Ries, 2011).

Compared to Traditional Methods

The lean startup is starkly in contrast to more traditional business methods, such as lemonade stand models. Those types of models are very straightforward but very limited in accessibility. Many startups need more funding or cannot get funding immediately because they first need validation that their product works. Due to the need to validate that a business vision works, the traditional business models create a vicious cycle that blocks many ideas from taking flight. The lean startup has innovators focus on creating a minimum viable product that makes their vision tangible so that they can start talking with customers and validate their product. As Danny Stern discusses in Publisher’s Weekly, “…taking ideas to the market without going through the arduous and old-fashioned process of writing a business plan” (Stern, 2014, p.150). A traditional business plan takes much more time and effort, and the lean startup lets you hit the ground running almost immediately.

Minimum Viable Product

A minimum viable product (MVP) is a product that is created as slim and lean as possible to get the business vision into something tangible for the target user. The MVP has a wide range of mediums, for example, a poster, a video, a physical product like a bottle, or a digital product like a website or application. The business vision and solution will help determine what the MVP will be. Moreover, Reis discusses many different case studies in his book, The Lean Startup. It is important to remember that sometimes, there are multiple MVPs because the company decided to pivot due to the feedback they were given. An MVP is usually a rough product that will go through many milestones and updates as you cycle through iterations. That is normal and necessary. The purpose of this first product is to get validation and not worry about the flaws. People willing to try out an MVP are almost always early adopters and will look past the bugs and rough edges (Ries, 2011, pp.76–78).

Application for my Entrepreneurial Journey

After reading The Lean Startup, I found many insightful tactics and tools for my entrepreneurial journey. I have used the build-measure-learn feedback loop in past jobs while trying to help pinpoint the best features to pursue in a requested MVP. Narrowing focus for an MVP is difficult, especially when you have many ideas. I have experienced this difficulty in a corporate setting and with my personal MVP. It is a small process, which helps me stay in the mindset of small iterations or small batches, as Reis called it in The Lean Startup (Reis, 2011). It is hard not to want to add as much as possible — to dream big and drag my feet when I must dial down the solutions to one solution. To stay on track, I plan to create milestones and small batches to help me pinpoint the work needed to progress my business vision in the right direction. I am excited to get started with the business model canvas. It will be an excellent tool to help me get started and focus on the crucial parts of my business vision.

Summation

When you have a business vision you are passionate about, the lean startup is a critical methodology. This methodology not only helps you curate your vision, but it also helps you build and validate it. Gone are the days of pitching to investors for a small step in your vision’s direction. Skip the time that can be wasted and get the validity of your solution before you spend too much of your precious time and money. “Fail fast. Learn fast. Improve fast.” This quote from Spotify’s engineering culture ties in with the thinking behind the lean startup very appropriately (Albright, n.d.).

References

Albright, C. (n.d.). Quote — “Fail Fast. Learn Fast. Improve Fast.” — Spotify Engineering Culture. Moments by Charlie.

Fadell, T. (2022, May 3.) Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making. HarperCollins Publishers Inc.

Pothaar, C. (2013, October 22). Storyboard of The Lean Startup Introduction. StoryboardItsBetter.

Ries, E. (2011, September 13). The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses. Crown Currency.

Stern, D. (2014, June 23). Book Review: The Innovator’s Method: Bringing the Lean Startup into Your Organization. Publishers Weekly, Library Reference Plus.