The Lean Startup
Eric Ries
The Lean Startup
Eric Ries
How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses
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- Published 2011
Introduction
In The Lean Startup, Eric Ries argues that most new ventures fail not because the idea is bad but because they are managed with the wrong tools: detailed plans and forecasts that only work when the future is predictable. He proposes treating a startup as a series of experiments, where the real measure of progress is what you have learned about your customers, not how much you have built.
The book has three parts. Vision defines the startup and introduces validated learning and experiments. Steer walks through the Build-Measure-Learn loop: risky assumptions, the minimum viable product, innovation accounting, and the choice to pivot or persevere. Accelerate covers small batches, engines of growth, the adaptive organization, and how established companies can innovate.
These are Ries's own views on building new ventures, drawn from his experience and the case studies he tells. They are not guaranteed outcomes, and this summary is not business or investment advice.
- 1A startup is a new venture under extreme uncertainty, so it needs its own kind of management
- 2Progress in a startup is validated learning, not building more
- 3Treat your vision as hypotheses and test the riskiest ones first
- 4A minimum viable product is the fastest way to start learning
- 5Measure progress with numbers that show cause and effect, not totals that only go up
- 6Decide to pivot or persevere on evidence, and pivot sooner than feels comfortable
- 7Work in small batches so problems and wrong guesses show up early
- 8Pick one engine of growth and track the numbers that drive it
- 9Build an organization that adjusts itself, investing in prevention in proportion to the pain
- 10Established companies can innovate if they give startup teams a protected sandbox
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