The list below focuses on core lean startup concepts such as hypothesis validation using minimum viable products, product-market fit, and pivoting. For posts on customer discovery interviewing and other user-centered design research techniques, see my list of UX Design resources. For posts on A/B testing, see my list of Marketing resources. For posts on agile software development, see my list of Product Management resources.
Companion lists, listed to the right and in this blog's nav bar, cover other topics relevant to startup management.
Companion lists, listed to the right and in this blog's nav bar, cover other topics relevant to startup management.
Lean Startup Overview
- Eric Ries explains lean startup principles in his book, The Lean Startup, and in a series of blog posts, e.g., on the minimum viable product concept, when to release your first product, the use of Toyota-style "five whys," the value of split test experiments, how to manage a business model transition, macro vs. micro testing in lean startups, and the merits of continuous deployment
- Steve Blank lays the foundation for lean startup principles in his book, Four Steps to the Epiphany, which presents the why and how of customer development processes; Blank's blog posts amplify these ideas, e.g., why you need to get out of the building to interview users, attributes of a scalable startup, the definition of a business model, and why startups should track progress with hypothesis validation, not traditional accounting metrics. Blank's Harvard Business Review article "Why the Lean Startup Changes Everything" provides an overview of lean startup logic.
- My course note, co-authored with Ries and Sarah Dillard, reviews the basics of hypothesis-driven entrepreneurship, including psychological barriers to following lean startup discipline
- The book Getting to Plan B by John Mullins (London Business School) and Randy Komisar (Kleiner Perkins) explains why and how entrepreneurs should pivot
- Laura Klein's book, UX for Lean Startups, provides an overview of user-centered design research techniques for validating demand in early-stage tech startups
- The book Running Lean, by entrepreneur Ash Maurya, summarizes lean startup/customer development principles and adapts Alex Osterwalder's business model canvas to web startups
- Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits describe customer development and lean startup methods in their books, The Lean Entrepreneur and The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development
- Donald Reinertsen is a consultant and author of Principles of Product Development Flow. The book is dense and theoretical, but patient readers will learn a lot about the economic benefits of fast development cycles
- Informly founder Dan Norris offers a skeptical view of demand validation techniques and argues that reliable MVPs are difficult to execute
- The case against releasing early/often from Jason Cohen at OnStartups.com
- Dharmesh Shah on why early evidence is often too early and not really evidence
- Ben Horowitz of Andreessen Horowitz on the lean vs. "fat" startup tradeoffs and the elusive nature of product-market fit
- Glenn Kelman of Redfin on how running lean without deep product conviction can lead entrepreneurs to pivot too quickly and build mediocre products
- Mark Suster of GRP Partners on the wisdom (and ethics) of failing fast
- The blog post from Marc Andreessen that coined the term product-market fit
- Andrew Chen unpacks the concept of product-market fit
- Growth guru Brian Balfour on indicators of product-market fit
- William Mougayar on why achieving product-market fit should be viewed as a gradual process, not a single event
- My favorite post on the MVP concept, from Steve Blank: "An MVP Is Not a Cheaper Product, It's About Smart Learning"
- Michael Woloszynowicz on misperceptions about minimum viable products
- Eric Ries on using letters of intent to get feedback on a minimal viable product
- Tristan Kromer on the differences between concierge and "Wizard of Oz" MVPs
- David Aycan of IDEO on the value of prototyping multiple MVPs in parallel
- A step-by-step example from Aymeric Guarat-Apelli of "smoke testing," i.e., assessing the viability of a new business concept by measuring consumer response to ads for a dummy site
- Entrepreneur Graeham Douglas on lean techniques for rapid prototyping of physical products
- Vin Vacanti on how Yipit used a manual MVP to validate demand (i.e., by substituting humans for as-yet-unbuilt algorithms)
- Michael Herman, co-founder of Real Python, describes ways to use Kickstarter to validate demand for a new venture
Pivoting
- Tristan Kromer, co-founder of StartupSQUARE, develops a taxonomy of pivot types
- Elad Gil outlines the pros and cons of staying in stealth mode
- The book Lean Analytics, by Alistair Croll and Ben Yoskovitz, provides a practical guide to applying lean startup analytics to different tech startup business models, and presents metric to track for each model, along with benchmarks for good performance
- Ben Yoskovitz of GoInstant on the value of focusing on "one metric that matters"
- Ash Maurya discusses metrics that guide action
- Case Study: The Nordstrom Innovation Lab, by Eric Ries. Watch the second video, which shows how a design team used customer feedback on MVP prototypes to rapidly refine a concept for an i-Pad app for sunglasses purchasers
- A video from one of Eric Ries's annual Lean Startup Conferences of the founder of Chef's Table discussing their pivots and hypothesis tests winner, Chef's Table. Many other case studies are captured in LSC videos
- Vin Vacanti on excuses that kept Yipit from launching early.
- Ries's 2nd book, The Leader's Guide (available through Kickstarter), discusses how to apply lean startup methods in large organizations
- Max Wessell and James Allworth of the HBS Forum for Growth and Innovation consider the applicability of lean startup methods in big companies
