The Lean Startup

The Lean Startup Full Book Introduction

We have entered an era of unprecedented entrepreneurial renaissance, but the success rate of today’s startups is very low due to the absence of effective management. How to improve a startup’s chances of success has become an inevitable question for every entrepreneur. This book proposes the idea of ‘lean startup’. By developing minimum viable products and failing fast, a business could validate whether its product meets the customers’ needs or not at the minimum cost and in the shortest time. During the process, a startup can acquire “validated learning” and improve its chance of success.

Author : Eric Ries

The author, Eric Ries, is the Co-Founder and CTO of IMVU as well as an Entrepreneur in Residence at Harvard Business School. His idea of ‘lean startup’ has been extensively reported in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, The Huffington Post, and many other media. He also provides consulting services related to business and product strategy for a number of startups, large companies, and venture capital institutions.

Overview | Chapter 1

Hi, welcome to Bookey. Today we will unlock the book The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses.

In an era of unprecedented entrepreneurial renaissance, how could a startup stand out from fierce competition and succeed? A great product? An amazing team? Or an extraordinary idea? The answer is none of these. A business with a great product could easily fail if its marketing strategy is improper. But even a perfect marketing strategy does not guarantee success. A startup with both a good product and a marketing strategy in line with market demands might gain some early success, but it could still fail from blind expansion and excessive operating expenses. Even a world-renowned company like Kodak could eventually go bankrupt due to its inability to adapt to market changes and transform its business. On top of idea, product, team, and other elements, a startup that wants to be successful and continue to grow needs to have a set of scientific management practices. If a company can do this, it will develop and grow in an orderly manner and put itself in a nearly invincible position.

Many startups fail due to improper management practices, so some entrepreneurs try to imitate the management practices of those long-established enterprises. But they neglected one fact: Although the traditional enterprises have mature management models, their models are not applicable or appropriate for startups. The practices of traditional enterprises are based on a stable market environment, while startups face a chaotic market environment with extreme uncertainty. As a result, the conventional management practices are not helpful to the development of startups, and sometimes those practices may even introduce bureaucracy and kill creativity instead. On the other hand, some other entrepreneurs do the exact opposite: They completely abandon the conventional management principles and just follow their instincts. But this also doesn’t guarantee success and can be problematic. So, how exactly should entrepreneurs manage their startups in order to succeed?

This book proposes the idea of a ‘lean startup’. By developing a minimum viable product (MVP), a startup could quickly validate if a product meets customers’ needs at the minimum cost and in the shortest time. The process is called ‘validated learning’, which can help entrepreneurs improve their chances of success. The concept of ‘lean startup’ was highly regarded after being tested in the market, it’s also been extensively reported in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, The Huffington Post and many other media.

Eric Ries, the author of the book, is the Co-Founder and CTO of IMVU, and also an Entrepreneur in Residence at Harvard Business School. He created the concept of lean startup and established IMVU using this method. Ries provides consulting services related to business and product strategy for a number of startups, large companies, and venture capital institutions. He’s helped many startups to succeed.

In this bookey, we will analyze The Lean Startup book in three parts:

Part one, the fundamentals of a lean startup;

Part two, using lean startup to achieve early success;

Party three, how to further grow a startup.