Lean Startup Archives

#1 Book Book Summary + PDF: The Lean Startup, by Eric Ries

Do you want to start a startup, but you’re afraid of failing? Or are you running a project today that’s just not making progress, no matter how hard you try?

The Lean Startup by Eric Ries is considered a bible in the tech entrepreneurship community. Out of dozens of business books I’ve read over years, this has had the single largest impact on the way I build my business. Its concepts will help you avoid startup failure.

What is The Lean Startup, in a nutshell? It’s a methodology for creating businesses that focuses you on finding out what customers want as quickly as possible. It uses concepts of scientific experimentation to prove that you’re making progress. It encourages you to launch as early and cheaply as possible so you don’t waste time and money.

Here’s what you’ll learn in this Lean Startup summary:

How to figure out what your customers really want, so you don’t build a product no one wants
Why you’re almost certainly launching your product too late, and wasting money in the process
How focusing on the wrong metrics will deceive you about how your startup is failing
How to decide whether you should keep trying or pivot your startup in a new direction
The common fears that are holding you back and putting you in denial about your startup’s status

The ORIGINAL Dropbox MVP Explainer Video

Dropbox is now a technology giant, valued at $10 billion in a 2014 funding round. It’s a very complex product, honed over a decade of development and hundreds of millions of dollars of investment.

But Dropbox didn’t start with the slick, seamless product you use today.

So let’s go back to the beginning, before Dropbox had a polished product and thousands of employees. Back to Dropbox’s original Minimum Viable Product (MVP). If you’re an aspiring entrepreneur, be emboldened by the idea that Dropbox started with just about as much as you have right now.

What’s a Concierge MVP? How Do You Build One?

The Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is one of the most important concepts in Lean Startup methodology. A well-designed MVP tests your core business hypotheses with a dramatically simplified product that saves you a huge amount of time and effort.

The Concierge MVP, and its sibling the Wizard of Oz MVP, are clever techniques that replace a complicated technical product with humans. With minimal engineering time, you’ll be able to test the key question of your business: “does anyone even want what you’re building?”

In this guide we’ll learn:

what the Concierge MVP and Wizard of Oz MVP are
examples of effective MVPs
which MVP type to choose for your business