Lean Startup

The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses
by Eric Ries
Published 13 Sep 2011

You can also find a list of cities where people are interested in starting a new group, and tools to set one up yourself. The Lean Startup Wiki Not every Lean Startup group uses Meetup.com to organize, and a comprehensive list of events and other resources is maintained by volunteers on the Lean Startup Wiki: http://leanstartup.pbworks.com/ The Lean Startup Circle The largest community of practice around the Lean Startup is happening online, right now, on the Lean Startup Circle mailing list. Founded by Rich Collins, the list has thousands of entrepreneurs sharing tips, resources, and stories every day. If you have a question about how Lean Startup might apply to your business or industry, it’s a great place to start: http://leanstartupcircle.com/ The Startup Lessons Learned Conference For the past two years, I have run a conference called Startup Lessons Learned.

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The most nervous I have ever been in a meeting was when I was attempting to explain Lean Startup principles to the chief information officer of the U.S. Army, who is a three-star general (for the record, he was extremely open to new ideas, even from a civilian like me). Pretty soon I realized that it was time to focus on the Lean Startup movement full time. My mission: to improve the success rate of new innovative products worldwide. The result is the book you are reading. THE LEAN STARTUP METHOD This is a book for entrepreneurs and the people who hold them accountable. The five principles of the Lean Startup, which inform all three parts of this book, are as follows: 1.

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I maintain an official website for The Lean Startup at http://theleanstartup.com, where you can find additional resources, including case studies and links to further reading. You will also find links there to my blog, Startup Lessons Learned, as well as videos, slides, and audio from my past presentations. Lean Startup Meetups Chances are there is a Lean Startup meetup group near you. As of this writing, there are over a hundred, with the largest in San Francisco, Boston, New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. You can find a real-time map of groups here: http://lean-startup.meetup.com/. You can also find a list of cities where people are interested in starting a new group, and tools to set one up yourself.

The Startup Way: Making Entrepreneurship a Fundamental Discipline of Every Enterprise
by Eric Ries
Published 15 Mar 2017

A clear understanding of the tools of the Lean Startup is necessary before diving further into the Startup Way. The next chapter is a look at the methods that make up the Lean Startup way of working, complete with tools and examples. For newcomers, this chapter will provide an introduction to the foundational concepts of the Lean Startup. For those familiar with it, I’ve tried to focus on seeing the concepts through a new lens: how, as leaders, we can help our teams live these principles every day. CHAPTER 4 LESSONS FROM THE LEAN STARTUP There’s a reason why the Startup Way has emerged out of the Lean Startup movement.

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Then I began writing about it, first online beginning in 2008, and then in a book, The Lean Startup, published in 2011. What happened from there exceeded my wildest expectations. The Lean Startup movement spread worldwide. More than a million people around the world read the book. Odds are, no matter where on the globe you are right now, there’s a local Lean Startup Meetup group nearby.1 Thousands of founders, investors, and others in the startup ecosystem rallied to embrace the ideas and practices of Lean Startup. In the book, I made a claim that seemed radical at the time. I argued that a startup should be properly understood as “a human institution designed to create a new product or service under conditions of extreme uncertainty.”

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Silicon Valley is obsessed with vision and the visionary founder who can uniquely execute it. This focus has been a source of some controversy as Lean Startup has become more popular. Because of our emphasis on science, metrics, and experimentation, it’s a common (but misguided) criticism that Lean Startup seeks to replace vision or, in some ways, de-emphasize it. (I did my best to dispel this misunderstanding in The Lean Startup—starting on this page! There’s a reason why Part One of The Lean Startup was called “Vision.”) No methodology or process can replace this essential element of a startup. But why is vision so important?

Lean Analytics: Use Data to Build a Better Startup Faster
by Alistair Croll and Benjamin Yoskovitz
Published 1 Mar 2013

Keep that definition in mind as you read the rest of this book. Lean Startup Eric Ries defined the Lean Startup process when he combined customer development, Agile software development methodologies, and Lean manufacturing practices into a framework for developing products and businesses quickly and efficiently. First applied to new companies, Eric’s work is now being used by organizations of all sizes to disrupt and innovate. After all, Lean isn’t about being cheap or small, it’s about eliminating waste and moving quickly, which is good for organizations of any size. One of Lean Startup’s core concepts is build→measure→learn—the process by which you do everything, from establishing a vision to building product features to developing channels and marketing strategies, as shown in Figure 1.

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Guts matter; you’ve just got to test them. Instincts are experiments. Data is proof. The Lean Startup Movement Innovation is hard work—harder than most people realize. This is true whether you’re a lone startup trying to disrupt an industry or a rogue employee challenging the status quo, tilting at corporate windmills and steering around bureaucratic roadblocks. We get it. Entrepreneurship is crazy, bordering on absurd. Lean Startup provides a framework by which you can more rigorously go about the business of creating something new. Lean Startup delivers a heavy dose of intellectual honesty. Follow the Lean model, and it becomes increasingly hard to lie, especially to yourself.

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“It helps to set aside the vanity metrics, step back, and look at the bigger picture.“ Lean Startup and Big Vision Some entrepreneurs are maniacally, almost compulsively, data-obsessed, but tend to get mired in analysis paralysis. Others are casual, shoot-from-the-hip intuitionists who ignore data unless it suits them, and pivot lazily from idea to idea without discipline. At the root of this divide is the fundamental challenge that Lean Startup advocates face: how do you have a minimum viable product and a hugely compelling vision at the same time? Plenty of founders use Lean Startup as an excuse to start a company without a vision.

Exponential Organizations: Why New Organizations Are Ten Times Better, Faster, and Cheaper Than Yours (And What to Do About It)
by Salim Ismail and Yuri van Geest
Published 17 Oct 2014

Once the concept became successful, Apple scaled it aggressively; the company currently has 425 retail stores in sixteen countries. This technique is popularly known as the Lean Startup movement, which was created by Eric Ries and Steve Blank and is based on Ries’s book of the same name. The Lean Startup philosophy (also known as the Lean Launchpad) is in turn based upon Toyota’s “lean manufacturing” principles, first established a half-century ago, in which the elimination of wasteful processes is paramount. (Sample principle: “Eliminate all expenses with any goal other than the creation of value for the end customer.”) The Lean Startup concept was also given impetus by Steve Blank’s book, The Four Steps to the Epiphany, which focuses on customer development.

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AirBnB or Adsense) Real time Dashboards and Employee Management 14) Which metrics do you track about your organization and your product innovation portfolio? (e.g. Lean Startup Analytics?)* ( ) We only track traditional KPIs monthly/quarterly/annually (e.g. sales, costs, profits) ( ) We collect some real-time, traditional metrics from transactional systems (e.g. ERP) ( ) We collect all real-time, traditional metrics and use some Lean Startup metrics ( ) We collect real-time traditional metrics and Lean Startup (value and learning) metrics like repeat usage, monetization, referral and NPS 15) Do you use some variant of Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) to track individual/team performance?

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There are some limitations to the Lean Startup approach, including lack of competitor analysis or considerations in design thinking. Also, it is important to note that the ability to fail is much easier in software and information-based environments because iteration is so much easier. For a hardware company, it’s much harder to iterate. Apple launches hardware only when it’s perfect. You wouldn’t want to iterate and fail fast when building a nuclear reactor. As Nathan Furr and Jeff Dyer state in their new book, The Innovator’s Method: Bringing the Lean Start-up into Your Organization: “Don’t try to scale it until you nail it.”

User Story Mapping: Discover the Whole Story, Build the Right Product
by Jeff Patton and Peter Economy
Published 14 Apr 2014

Where a typical design process may take weeks or months to validate a solution idea, a Lean Startup process usually takes just days. What’s in a Name I need to tell you that I love most things about Lean Startup thinking. But one thing I don’t love is the name. It’s not all that Lean, and the concepts are way too important to just be used by startups. Lean refers to the use of Lean thinking and principles as described by the Toyota Processing System decades ago, and Lean thinking as it’s popularly used in lots of other contexts now, including software development. There are tons of good ideas to be found in Lean thinking, and Lean Startup only scratches the surface.

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There’s always some amount of risk, and the learning strategies described in a Lean Startup process are pretty useful in most contexts. There’s no need to try to justify to yourself or others that you need to behave like a startup. How Lean Startup Thinking Changes Product Design In the bad old days, we’d have come up with a big idea, built it, and hoped for the best. If we were trying to break out of that trap using a rigorous design process, we’d have done our best to set aside our great ideas, and then dig deep into research to understand the problems we’re solving. Here’s how I recommend we do things today, using Lean Startup thinking. Start by Guessing Yes, guessing.

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Normally this would be disappointing news, because we all hate being wrong. But, in a Lean Startup approach, this is excellent news. It’s excellent because they found they were wrong after a couple of days of thinking and working, as opposed to finding out after weeks of a team building software. If you’re using this sort of approach, your biggest challenge will be to learn to celebrate what you’re learning as opposed to worrying about being wrong. In a Lean Startup approach, failing to learn is frequently the biggest failure. In a Lean Startup approach, build means build the smallest possible experiment you can.

Why Startups Fail: A New Roadmap for Entrepreneurial Success
by Tom Eisenmann
Published 29 Mar 2021

When the information service CB Insights identified determinants of failure for scores of recent startups, the most common problem—cited nearly half of the time—was “no market need.” That baffled me. After all, Lean Startup methods have been widely understood and embraced by entrepreneurs for almost a decade. Through experiments and iteration, any founder following these methods should have been able to identify and pivot to an attractive opportunity. But the landscape has been littered with roadkill in the form of self-proclaimed Lean Startups that never found a market. Why? Was something missing from Lean Startup’s dogma? I’ve been a Lean Startup apostle since 2010, when I first met the movement’s progenitors. That year, Steve Blank presented his seminal ideas to my students and Eric Ries became an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at HBS.

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That year, Steve Blank presented his seminal ideas to my students and Eric Ries became an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at HBS. But as I dug deeper into case studies of failure, I concluded that Lean Startup practices were falling short of their promise. It’s not that the methodology isn’t sound, it’s that many entrepreneurs who claimed to embrace Lean Startup logic actually embraced only part of the Lean Startup canon. Specifically, they launched minimum viable products (MVPs)—the simplest possible offering that would yield reliable customer feedback—and iterated on them in response. By putting their MVP out there and testing how customers responded, these founders should have been able to avoid squandering too much time and money building and marketing a product that no one wanted.

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Weak founders rarely attract strong teams and smart money. So, what went wrong? Lean Startup gurus advise founders to “launch early and often,” putting a real product into the hands of real customers to secure their feedback as fast as possible. Triangulate’s team did that, over and over. With each product iteration, they responded to customer feedback quickly and pivoted in a nimble manner. In doing so, they heeded another Lean Startup mantra: Fail Fast. But Triangulate’s team, like many entrepreneurs, neglected yet another Lean Startup precept: complete “customer discovery”—a thorough round of interviews with prospective customers—before designing and developing a minimum viable product.

Lab Rats: How Silicon Valley Made Work Miserable for the Rest of Us
by Dan Lyons
Published 22 Oct 2018

Just as Agile evolved from being a few ideas about how to write software into a magical methodology that can be used for almost anything, including transforming entire organizational cultures, so Lean Startup has been embraced by disciples who have imbued the methodology with near-supernatural powers. Like Agile, Lean Startup has become a global phenomenon, and an industry unto itself. Ries formed a consultancy, Lean Startup Co., to sell engagements, run conferences, and offer education programs. Other consultancies have built Lean Startup practices as well. Despite its name, Lean Startup is not aimed just at start-ups. Ries says any organization, big or small, can use the principles. People inside big companies can behave like entrepreneurs; Ries calls them “intrapreneurs.”

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The biggest is Agile, a management fad that has swept the corporate world and morphed into what some call a movement but is more like widespread mental illness. The other is Lean Startup, which has its own cult-like following but is less popular. Taken together, these two methodologies represent an enormous global experiment in organizational behavior, in which millions of poor Dilberts are being turned into unwitting lab rats, sometimes with terrible consequences. Just like Taylor, proponents of Agile and Lean Startup believe with almost religious fervor that they can make organizations more efficient. Just like Taylor, they are probably well meaning but almost certainly dead wrong. Significantly, both Agile and Lean Startup originated in Silicon Valley, and both were invented by computer scientists.

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As Immelt recounted in an essay for Harvard Business Review, he told his managers, “Guys, if we don’t become the best technology company in the world, we’re doomed. We’re dead. There’s no Plan B.” Ries became key to Immelt’s plan. Immelt brought him into GE to preach the Lean Startup gospel inside the company’s far-flung divisions. Back at headquarters, Ries and Immelt launched a program that GE calls FastWorks, which is based on Lean Startup. Over the past few years more than sixty thousand GE employees have received Lean Startup training. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough. GE’s revenues stalled. The stock price languished, even as the overall stock market was surging. In 2017, the board booted Immelt.

Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth
by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares
Published 5 Oct 2015

In total, more than ten thousand people attended these events, where they connected over ideas that Seth wrote about as well as built relationships with one another. Great meetups can create lasting community connections. The meetup groups that watched the live stream of the first Lean Startup conference continue to meet years afterward: more than twenty cities still have regular “Lean Startup Circle” meetups. These events allow practitioners to continue to connect over the ideas in Eric’s book. They’ve also helped keep his book on the bestseller list. You can start your own meetup, join an existing one, or even sponsor an event where your prospective customers will be.

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See offline events; speaking engagements; trade shows Evernote, 6, 169–70, 171–74 Evernote Peek, 173–74 Evite, 184, 188 Exceptional Cloud Services, xii existing platforms, 6, 167–74, 212 app stores, 167–70 case study of Evernote, 171–74 social sites, 170–71 targets, 174 Facebook, 4, 31, 78, 79, 120 fat-head SEO strategy, 93, 94–95, 100–101 Feld, Brad, 106, 176–77 Fernandez, Phil, 11–12 Ferriss, Tim, 83–84 50 percent rule, 8–12 Filepicker.io, 47 Firefox, 142, 169 First Round Capital, 137 Fishkin, Rand, 4, 92, 94, 99, 100, 195 500 Startups, 5 flyers, 4, 84, 86–87 Focused Apps LLC, 168 Fog Creek Software, 199 Followerwonk, 46, 131 Foundry Group, 176–77 Foursquare, 80 Fox News, 62 Fralic, Chris, 6, 133, 137, 139–44 FreeAppADay, 169 freemium business model, 114, 162 fund-raising, 15–16, 54–55 Gates Foundation, 50 GitHub, 202 giveaways, 61, 180 GoDaddy, 6 Godin, Seth, 187 Google, ix–x, 65, 71–72, 94, 137–38 Google Alerts, 47 Google Analytics, 69, 96 Google Docs, 120 Google Trends, 95 Graham, Paul, 2, 14, 42 Grasshopper.com, 60, 62–63 Gross Rating Points (GRPs), 87–88 Groupon, 113, 115, 138 growth goals, 12–15, 18, 35–36, 139 growth rate, 12, 16, 18 growth spurts, 14 guest posting, 25, 31, 106, 211 Guidewire Software, 148–49 Gumroad, 46–47 Hacker News, 46–47, 50, 78 HacktheSystem, 163 Half.com, 6, 58, 62, 133, 139–40 Halligan, Brian, 130 Hardware Startup Meetup, 187–88 Hauser, David, 60, 62–63 Help A Reporter Out (HARO), 53 Hipmunk, 4, 60, 61 hiring, use of community for, 202–3 HitTail, 186–87 Holiday, Ryan, 3, 48–49, 50, 52–53, 54–55 HostGator, 6 Hotmail, 120 HubSpot, 5, 100, 129–31, 154 Huffington Post, 48, 49 Hunch, 174 Imgur, 171 implication questions, 149–50 indirect response, in social advertising, 76–77, 81 Inflection, 4, 66–68, 70–71 influencers, 54 infographics, 99, 104, 105, 210 infomercials, 89–90 information products, 161 inner ring, 22–23 inner ring testing, 22–23, 28–31, 44 InstaCab, 87 Intuit, 43 investors fund-raising, 15–16 growth numbers, 15, 18 invitations, 44, 124–25, 188 iPhone, 59, 120, 138, 172 JBoss, 156–58 Johnson, Mark, 168 joint ventures, 138, 145 Jones, Kris, 159, 165–66 Jones, Kristopher, 6 Kagan, Noah, 3, 24–25, 42–45 Kawasaki, Guy, 62 Kayak, 6, 138–39, 145 Keyword Planner, 68–69, 94, 95 keyword research, 68–69, 70–71 KeywordSpy, 69 keyword strategies, 69, 72, 73, 93, 95–98, 100–101 Kincaid, Jason, 3, 51, 52 Klout, 46 Kopelman, Josh, 58 Kundra, Ashish, 5, 124 Lamar Advertising, 87 Launch Conference, 184 Law of Shitty Click-Throughs, 30–31, 33 lead generation, 161 lead qualifications, and sales funnel, 153–55, 157 leaky bucket, 10–11, 13, 17 Lean Startup, The (Ries), 7 Lean Startup model, 25–26, 185 Libin, Phil, 171–72 licensing, 138, 145 Lifehacker, 45, 50 Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? (Godin), 187 Linford, Zack, 134–35 link building, 23, 94–95, 98–99, 100–101 link buying, 99, 101 LinkedIn, 79, 98 LinkShare, 160, 165 link sharing, 46, 54 long-tail keyword strategy, 69, 73, 93, 95–98, 100–101 loyalty programs, 160–61 McCann, Chris, 199, 203 McKenzie, Patrick, 4, 96–97, 113, 132 magazine ads, 83, 85 MailChimp, 115–16, 120 Manhattan Media, 84 marketing.

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Offline Events Sponsoring or running offline events—from small meetups to large conferences—can be a primary way to get traction. We spoke with Rob Walling, founder and organizer of MicroConf, to talk about how to run a fantastic event. Speaking Engagements Eric Ries, author of the bestselling book The Lean Startup, told us how he used speaking engagements to hit the bestseller list within a week of his book’s launch. We also interviewed Dan Martell, founder of Clarity, to learn how to leverage a speaking event, give an awesome talk, and grow your startup’s profile at such speaking gigs. Community Building Companies like Wikipedia and Stack Exchange have grown by forming passionate communities around their products.

The AI-First Company
by Ash Fontana
Published 4 May 2021

MILESTONES FOR LEAN START-UPS VERSUS LEAN AIs lean start-up lean ai Minimum viable product Minimum predictive accuracy Product features Model features Output a calculation Output a prediction Performant Accurate Functional Reliable Product usage Prediction acceptance Launch a company Launch an AI-First product Building a lean start-up is different from building a Lean AI. Instead of building a product and a company, you’re generating a prediction and a system. Instead of showing a demo, you’re showing a report. Feedback is not qualitative (whether the product is easy to use) but quantitative (whether the prediction was accurate enough). The table below shows the differences at each step of the process. BUILDING LEAN START-UPS VERSUS LEAN AIs step lean start-up lean ai 0 Understand the customer’s problem 1 Determine product features Determine model features 2 Build a product Generate a prediction 3 Show a demo Show a report 4 Receive qualitative feedback Receive quantitative feedback 5 Build more features Collect more data 6 Relaunch the product Retrain the model 7 Measure usage Measure accuracy 8 Launch a company Launch an AI-First product PUTting MVPs Aside The lean start-up popularized the concept of a minimum viable product, or MVP: the minimum set of product features a customer needs for a product to be useful.

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Instead of having product features as milestones, your milestones are model features. The output is a prediction, not a calculation. The performance and function of the prediction in the customer’s workflow are less important than the accuracy and reliability. The table below illustrates the different milestones. MILESTONES FOR LEAN START-UPS VERSUS LEAN AIs lean start-up lean ai Minimum viable product Minimum predictive accuracy Product features Model features Output a calculation Output a prediction Performant Accurate Functional Reliable Product usage Prediction acceptance Launch a company Launch an AI-First product Building a lean start-up is different from building a Lean AI.

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Potential customers need to know whether that prediction is accurate when made for them—on their data and in their environment. Lean AI is a process to build an AI-First product. The process is about solving a specific problem with AI and building a small but complete AI that can grow into other domains or remain focused on one. Lean AI is not the same process as the lean start-up process. The goals of building a lean start-up are also different when building an AI the lean way. Instead of building an MVP, get to the PUT. Instead of product features as milestones, model features are milestones. The output is a prediction, not a calculation. The performance and function of the prediction in the customer’s workflow are less important than the accuracy and reliability.

AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order
by Kai-Fu Lee
Published 14 Sep 2018

THE LEAN GLADIATOR But the copycat era taught Chinese technology entrepreneurs more than just dirty tricks and insane schedules. The high financial stakes, propensity for imitation, and market-driven mentality also ended up incubating companies that embodied the “lean startup” methodology. That methodology was first explicitly formulated in Silicon Valley and popularized by the 2011 book The Lean Startup. Core to its philosophy is the idea that founders don’t know what product the market needs—the market knows what product the market needs. Instead of spending years and millions of dollars secretly creating their idea of the perfect product, startups should move quickly to release a “minimum viable product” that can tease out market demand for different functions.

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his autobiography, Disruptor: 周鸿祎, “颠覆者” (北京: 北京联合出版公司, 2017). Sinovation event in Menlo Park: Dr. Andrew Ng, Dr. Sebastian Thrun, and Dr. Kai-Fu Lee, “The Future of AI,” moderated by John Markoff, Sinovation Ventures, Menlo Park, CA, June 10, 2017, http://us.sinovationventures.com/blog/the-future-of-ai. book The Lean Startup: Eric Ries, The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses (New York: Crown Business, 2011). 3. CHINA’S ALTERNATE INTERNET UNIVERSE the Next Web: Francis Tan, “Tencent Launches Kik-Like Messaging App,” The Next Web, January 21, 2011, https://thenextweb.com/asia/2011/01/21/tencent-launches-kik-like-messaging-app-in-china/.

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See risk-of-replacement graphs; unemployment, mass Johansson, Scarlett, 199 K Kaixin001, 42–43 Kasparov, Garry, 4 Ke Jiao, 113 Ke Jie, 1–2, 3, 5–6 Kennedy’s man-on-the-moon speech, 98 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 207 Kübler-Ross, Elisabeth, 188 Kurzweil, Ray, 140–41 L labor unions, decline of, 150 The Lean Startup, 44 lean startup methodology, 44–45 LeCun, Yann, 86, 88, 90, 93 Lee, Kai-Fu birth of first child, 177–79 cancer diagnosis, 176–77, 181–83, 225 epitaphs of, 180–81, 194 family of, 175–76, 177–79, 184–87, 193–94, 195, 225 Master Hsing Yun and, 187–90, 195 regrets of, 185–87, 188 research on lymphoma, 190–92 venture capital industry and, ix, xi, 3, 52 will of, 183–85 work obsession, 175–80 Lee Sedol, 3 legal decisions by judges, 115–16 Lenovo, 89 Li, Robin, 37 lifelong learning, 204 life purpose, loss of, 21 Li Keqiang, 62–63 LinkedIn, 39 Liu Qingfeng, 105 liveness algorithm, 118 love AI as opportunity to refocus on, 176–77, 196, 210 centrality of, in human experience, 198, 199, 225, 231–32 Lee’s cancer and refocus on, 193–96 Master Hsing Yun’s wisdom about, 189–90, 195 new social contract and, 200–201 regrets about not sharing, 185, 186–87, 195 service-focused impact investing and, 217 Luddite fallacy, 147–48, 151 Lyft, 79, 137 lymphoma, 176, 183, 190–92, 194 M Ma, Jack, 34–37, 60–61, 66–67, 137 machine learning advances in, recent, 160–61 algorithms, 40.

A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas
by Warren Berger
Published 4 Mar 2014

She advises looking for temporary assignments, outside contracts, advisory work, and moonlighting to get experience or build skills in new industries; executive programs, sabbaticals, and extended vacations can be valuable in providing opportunities to experiment. She concludes, “We learn who we are—in practice, not in theory—by testing reality.” Eric Ries of the Lean Startup has led a rapidly growing movement encouraging companies to do exactly what Ibarra is talking about for individuals—i.e., to experiment as a business, try lots of new ideas to see what works, and introduce new products and services quickly in order to “test and learn.” Ries feels the Lean Startup approach and philosophy can be applied to one’s life, as well. The basic principles hold up; if you’re starting a new career or even just embarking on a creative project or some other type of initiative, you’re in “start-up” mode—and the “lean” rules apply.

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Asking why again, the company might discover the training program was underfunded; and asking why about that could lead back to fundamental company priorities about where money should be spent and what was most important in the end. The value of this kind of excavation-by-inquiry is becoming more widely recognized in the business world, most recently as part of the Lean Startup methodology taught by the author/consultant Eric Ries, who is a big proponent of the five whys. I asked Ries why a simple, almost-childlike practice seems to work so well. “It’s a technique that’s really designed to overcome the limits of human psychology,” Ries explained. By this he means that people are inclined to look for the easiest, most obvious explanation for a problem.

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“Hackers try to build the best services over the long term by quickly releasing and learning from smaller iterations rather than trying to get everything right all at once . . . Instead of debating for days whether a new idea is possible or what the best way to build something is, hackers would rather just prototype something and see what works.” The rapid test-and-learn approach has caught on throughout the entrepreneurial world, fueled in part by Eric Ries’s Lean Startup phenomenon. Ries maintains that entrepreneurs, existing companies—or anyone trying to create something new and innovative—must find ways to constantly experiment and quickly put new ideas out into the world for public consumption, rather than devoting extensive resources and time to trying to perfect ideas behind closed doors.

Growth Hacker Marketing: A Primer on the Future of PR, Marketing, and Advertising
by Ryan Holiday
Published 2 Sep 2013

Blogs and Personalities: Andrew Chen’s essays http://andrewchen.co Noah Kagan’s blog http://okdork.com Patrick Vlaskovits http://vlaskovits.com/blog twitter.com/pv Jesse Farmer http://20bits.com Sean Ellis http://www.startup-marketing.com Paul Graham’s essays http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html Aaron Ginn http://www.aginnt.com Josh Elman https://medium.com/@joshelman Or just follow most of these guys as they answer questions at: http://www.quora.com/Growth-Hacking Books: The Lean Startup by Eric Ries The Lean Entrepreneur by Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits Founders at Work by Jessica Livingston Viral Loop by Adam L. Penenberg Contagious by Jonah Berger Lean Startup Marketing by Sean Ellis Presentations, Shows, and Classes: http://www.creativelive.com/courses/smart-pr-artists-entrepreneurs-and-small-business-ryan-holiday (a ten-hour course I made with creativeLIVE on marketing, attention, and free publicity) http://www.slideshare.net/mattangriffel/growth-hacking http://quibb.com/links/growth-hackers-conference-all-the-lessons-from-every-presentation http://www.slideshare.net/yongfook/growth-hacking-101-your-first-500000-users http://www.slideshare.net/gueste94e4c/dropbox-startup-lessons-learned-3836587 https://www.growthhacker.tv http://www.slideshare.net/yongfook/actionable-growth-hacking-tactics https://generalassemb.ly/education/user-acquisition-growth-hacking-for-startups https://www.udemy.com/growth-hacking-lean-marketing-for-startups http://www.slideshare.net/vlaskovits/growthhacker-live-preso-by-patrick-vlaskovits-pv http://www.slideshare.net/timhomuth/think-like-a-growth-hacker http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2011/09/24/how-to-create-a-million-dollar-business-this-weekend-examples-appsumo-mint-chihuahuas http://www.growhack.com/case-studies There Is Even a Growth Hackers’ Conference: http://growthhackersconference.com Endnotes 1 http://andrewchen.co/2012/04/27/how-to-be-a-growth-hacker-an-airbnbcraigslist-case-study. 2 E-mail to author, April 18, 2013. 3 Dialogue from Viral Loop by Adam L.

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Within eighteen months, the founders sold Instagram for $1 billion. Both of these companies spent a long time trying new iterations until they had achieved what growth hackers call Product Market Fit (PMF). That is, the product and its customers are in perfect sync with each other. Eric Ries, author of The Lean Startup, explains that the best way to get to Product Market Fit is by starting with a “minimum viable product” and improving it based on feedback—as opposed to what most of us do, which is to try to launch with what we think is our final product. Today, it is the marketer’s job as much as anyone else’s to make sure Product Market Fit happens.

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Everything can be improved—that’s what we’ve got to remind ourselves. The reality is that your product is probably broken in at least one way. And we must avail ourselves of the data and other information that tell us where those problems are. The role of the growth hacker is to ruthlessly optimize incoming traffic for success. As Eric Ries explains in The Lean Startup, “the focus needs to be on improving customer retention.” Forget the conventional wisdom that says if a company lacks growth, it should invest more in sales and marketing. Instead, it should invest in refining and improving the service itself until users are so happy that they can’t stop using the service (and their friends come along with them).

Brave New Work: Are You Ready to Reinvent Your Organization?
by Aaron Dignan
Published 1 Feb 2019

You’ll have to model and support this practice with discipline and passion to realize its many benefits. The Lean Startup Method. Inventing the future is hard. The early days of any startup (including new ventures inside established companies) are all about the search for product/market fit. The problem is that we fall in love with our initial vision and spend months and years perfecting a product that never sees the light of day. When we finally share it with customers, we’re astonished to find that it doesn’t really meet their needs or that their needs have changed. The Lean Startup method offers a more scientific approach to new-product development.

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“easily distinguishable operationally”: Justin Fox, “Amazon, the Biggest R&D Spender, Does Not Believe in R&D,” Bloomberg, April 12, 2018, www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-04-12/amazon-doesn-t-believe-in-research-and-development-spending. look for the next big thing: Andrew J. Smart, “Why Organizations Should Embrace Randomness Like Ant Colonies,” Harvard Business Review, September 13, 2013, https://hbr.org/2013/09/why-organizations-should-embra. how might we validate that: “The Lean Startup Methodology,” The Lean Startup, accessed September 1, 2018, http://theleanstartup.com/principles. two hours and thirty minutes: “Dec 01: 1913: Ford’s Assembly Line Starts Rolling,” This Day in History, History.com, December 1, 2009, www.history.com/this-day-in-history/fords-assembly-line-starts-rolling. 1,500 different companies around the world: Sumesh Krishnan and Dr.

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It is necessary but not sufficient. It turns out agility isn’t an anomaly in this way. Many management innovations have emerged in the last half century, each promising to revolutionize work as we know it. Lean Manufacturing. Total Quality Management. ISO 9000. Six Sigma. Sociocracy. Holacracy. The Lean Startup. The list goes on and on. Each was, in its own way, a piece of an operating system. Some were misguided from the start. Others became perversions of themselves over time. And a few offered real wisdom that is yet to be fully realized. Thich Nhat Hanh wrote in Old Path White Clouds, “A finger pointing at the moon is not the moon.”

Startup Communities: Building an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Your City
by Brad Feld
Published 8 Oct 2012

EXPERIMENT AND FAIL FAST The phrase fail fast is used throughout the startup ecosystem and has come to encapsulate the notion of continually trying new things, measuring the results, and either modifying the approach or doubling down, depending on the outcome. Eric Ries in his book The Lean Startup and the corresponding activity around the lean startup methodology has recently popularized this. This approach is a key attribute of vibrant startup communities. Think of your startup community as a lean startup—one that needs to try lots of experiments, measure the results, and pivot when things aren’t working. It’s not that you should fail fast across the entire startup community; instead you should fail fast on specific initiatives that don’t go anywhere, attract little interest, or generate no impact.

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If you cross a beauty pageant with a debate, plop it into a contrived startup competition format, and surround it with a revivalist atmosphere filled with entrepreneurial gospel, then you get the glorious mess known as the campus business-plan competition. Such competitions are inevitably flawed. Time frames are artificial. Companies are at various stages of development. Hard emphasis on planning is at odds with lean startup practices. And only in the bizarre environs of a campus competition does a nonprofit seeking a sustainable way to fund an orphanage in Africa compete with a carbon-capture technology that would store greenhouse gases in the ocean. Here is an even more curious thing. It somehow works. CU Boulder launched its New Venture Challenge in 2008.

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MICRO VERSUS MACRO Entrepreneurs often focus on the micro, that is, specific things that need to get done or will have impact. In contrast, government focuses on the macro. When I talk to leaders in government, they use words like global, macroeconomic, policy, innovation, and economic development. These are not words that entrepreneurs use; entrepreneurs talk about lean, startup, product, and people. Several years ago I was giving a talk about the Boulder startup community to a cross-section of Boulder business and local government people. During the Q&A section, a woman I knew got up and said, “What do you think ecodevos should be doing to help?” I stood, stunned for a moment because I didn’t know what ecodevos were.

Succeeding With AI: How to Make AI Work for Your Business
by Veljko Krunic
Published 29 Mar 2020

Such a social situation isn’t exactly conducive to encouraging people to perform the careful analysis needed to disprove the group consensus. In short, beware of groupthink. TIP But we’re using an MVP approach! Some teams are Agile and/or use Lean Startup [28] methodologies for developing their software projects. In a Lean Startup methodology, the team is encouraged to dice projects into small chunks of work that can be presented to the customer for feedback. This chunk of work is called the minimum viable product (MVP). Part of the Lean Startup methodology is that if you find that your MVP isn’t what the customer wants, you can then try something else—the so-called pivot. Some will argue that because you’re building an MVP, you should quickly select some initial AI idea, show it to the customer, and see what the customer says.

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K-means—One of the original clustering algorithms, it assigns its input data to one of the K clusters, where K is an integer. Label—In the context of classification, a label is the name of the category that data used in training belongs to. Lean startup—A methodology for running business operations described in Reis’ book [28]. Some of the principles of the lean startup methodology are to shorten the business development cycle by iterative product development and testing the product in the marketplace as soon as practical. While originally described in the context of startups, this methodology is now extensively used by organizations of all sizes.

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Chapter 4 describes in detail how to make that connection. Depending on the methodology you’re using to run your business, business metrics could be readily available, or you might have to develop them yourself. Various methodologies are available for running a business and measuring its results. If you’re looking for a starting point, the Lean Startup methodology described in Ries’s book [28] is popular in startup and IT settings. I also recommend reviewing the Business Performance Excellence (BPE) model described in Luftig and Ouellette’s book [1]. You may not have a direct business metric at your department level to which you can direct your data science project.

Black Box Thinking: Why Most People Never Learn From Their Mistakes--But Some Do
by Matthew Syed
Published 3 Nov 2015

“If I want to become a top commercial architect known for energy-efficient, minimalist designs, I must first design inefficient, clunky buildings.” The notion of getting into the trial and error process early informs one of the most elegant ideas to have emerged from the high-tech revolution: the lean start-up. This approach contains a great deal of jargon, but is based upon a simple insight: the value of testing and adapting. High-tech entrepreneurs are often brilliant theorists. They can perform complex mathematics in their sleep. But the lean start-up approach forces them to fuse these skills with what they can discover from failure. How does it work? Instead of designing a product from scratch, techies attempt to create a “minimum viable product” or MVP.

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If the MVP sufficiently resembles the proposed final product, but none of the early adopters have any interest in it, then you can be pretty sure that the entire business plan is worth ripping up. You have saved a huge amount of time and money by failing early. But if the MVP looks like a possible winner, you can now find out how it can be improved further. This is the second question answered by the lean start-up approach. You can see what features the consumers like and what they don’t like; you can see flaws in the concept and vary its assumptions as you develop toward the final product. In other words, you have hardwired the evolutionary process into the design of the business. • • • And this brings us back to Drew Houston.

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It totally blew us away.”16 Houston had demonstrated that people wanted the product. It enabled him to raise more capital and continue product development with confidence. But it also enabled him to interact with the early adopters, develop practical knowledge, and refine the product. That is the value of the lean start-up. Nick Swinmurn, another technology entrepreneur, created a rather different MVP. He reckoned the world needed a website in order to purchase a stylish collection of shoes. He could have gone about this in the usual way: raising millions in capital, creating a vast inventory, and developing relationships with all the various manufacturers: i.e., designing the entire company from scratch from a blueprint.

How Big Things Get Done: The Surprising Factors Behind Every Successful Project, From Home Renovations to Space Exploration
by Bent Flyvbjerg and Dan Gardner
Published 16 Feb 2023

In Silicon Valley, the standard approach for startups is to release a product quickly, even if it is far from perfect, then continue developing the product in response to consumer feedback. This is the “lean startup” model made famous by the entrepreneur Eric Ries in his 2011 book of the same name.25 It sounds an awful lot like the rush to get projects under way before they have been slowly and carefully planned—the very thing I have condemned as a key cause of project failure from the first page of this book. The success of Silicon Valley would seem to be a rebuke to my whole approach. In fact, the lean startup model squares well with my advice. The contradiction arises only if you take a narrow view of the nature of planning.

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Skamris, ref1 Holmes, Elizabeth, ref1 home and kitchen renovations, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10 honest numbers, ref1 Hong Kong, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 Hoover, Herbert, ref1, ref2 Hoover Dam, ref1, ref2, ref3 Hopper, Dennis, ref1 Hornsea Project, United Kingdom, ref1 Hughes, Robert, ref1 hurricanes, ref1 hydroelectricity, ref1 ice melt, ref1 Ickes, Harold, ref1 ignorance, ref1 IKEA, ref1 illusion of explanatory depth, ref1 inchstone approach, ref1 Incredibles, The (movie), ref1 Infinite Jest (Wallace), ref1 information technology (IT) projects, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14, ref15 (see also specific projects) Inside Out (movie), ref1, ref2 inside view (detail), ref1, ref2, ref3 Instagram, ref1 International Energy Agency, ref1, ref2 International Olympic Committee (IOC), ref1 International Renewable Energy Agency, ref1 Internet, ref1 intuitive judgments, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 iPod, ref1 Ireland, ref1 Iron Law of Megaprojects, ref1, ref2 iterations (see planning) Ive, Jony, ref1 James Webb Space Telescope, ref1, ref2 Japan, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7 Jaws (movie), ref1, ref2 Jay-Z, ref1 Jobs, Steve, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 Johnson, Lyndon B., ref1 Jørgensen, Hans Lauritz, ref1, ref2 Judaism, ref1 Justice, US Department of, ref1 Kahneman, Daniel, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9 Kazan, Elia, ref1, ref2 Kennedy, John F., ref1 King Kong, ref1 Kissinger, Henry, ref1 Klein, Gary, ref1, ref2 Kmart, ref1 Kramer, Eddie, ref1, ref2, ref3 kurtosis, ref1 LaGuardia Airport, New York, ref1 Lamb, William, ref1, ref2 large numbers, law of, ref1 Larsen, Henning, ref1 Lasko, Jim, ref1, ref2 Last Movie, The (movie), ref1 Lawrence of Arabia (movie), ref1 lean startup model, ref1 Lean Startup, The (Ries), ref1, ref2 Led Zeppelin, ref1 Lego, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7 Lennon, John, ref1 Levi Strauss, ref1 Levinson, Marc, ref1 Levy, Steven, ref1 lightbulbs, ref1, ref2 Lincoln, Abraham, ref1, ref2 Lincoln Center, New York City, ref1 lock-in, ref1, ref2, ref3 London, Olympic Games in, ref1 Los Angeles, California, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Lötschberg Base Tunnel, Switzerland, ref1 Machiavelli factor, ref1 Madrid Metro, ref1, ref2, ref3 Maersk, ref1 Mandelbrot, Benoit, ref1, ref2 Marriott hotel, New York City, ref1 Mass Transit Railway (MTR), Hong Kong, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 masterbuilders, ref1 maximum virtual product model, ref1, ref2 McAllister, Ian, ref1 McKinsey & Company, ref1 McLean, Malcolm, ref1 Mead, Margaret, ref1 mean, regression to, ref1 means and ends, ref1, ref2 megaprojects, ref1, ref2, ref3 adjustments and, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 airports, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8 anchoring and, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8 budgets and cost overruns, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14, ref15, ref16, ref17, ref18, ref19, ref20, ref21, ref22, ref23, ref24, ref25, ref26, ref27, ref28, ref29, ref30, ref31, ref32, ref33, ref34, ref35, ref36, ref37, ref38, ref39, ref40, ref41, ref42, ref43 commitment, escalation of, ref1, ref2 ending world hunger, as a megaproject, ref1, ref2 estimates and, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9 experience and (see experience) fat-tailed distribution and, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9 forecasting and, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9 heuristics for better leadership, ref1 home and kitchen renovations, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10 information technology (IT) projects, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14, ref15 inside view (detail) and, ref1, ref2, ref3 Lego and, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7 modularity and, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7 movie production, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6 normal distribution and, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 outside view (accuracy) and, ref1, ref2, ref3 planning and, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14, ref15, ref16 rail projects, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14, ref15, ref16, ref17, ref18, ref19, ref20 reference-class forecasting (RCF) and, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7 right to left, thinking from, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6 risk mitigation and, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7 schedules and, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14, ref15, ref16, ref17, ref18, ref19, ref20, ref21, ref22, ref23, ref24, ref25, ref26, ref27, ref28, ref29 teams and, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6 think slow, act fast and, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13 tunnels, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11 uniqueness bias and, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8 Mexico City, ref1 Microsoft, ref1 milestones, ref1, ref2 Miller, Diane Disney, ref1 minimum viable product model, ref1, ref2 mining, ref1, ref2, ref3 models, ref1 models and simulation, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 modularity, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7 Møller, Arnold Maersk Mc-Kinney, ref1 Monju nuclear power plant, Japan, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Montreal Gazette, ref1 Montreal Olympic Games (1976), ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Moses, Robert, ref1, ref2 movie production, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6 Museum of Modern Art, New York City, ref1 Musk, Elon, ref1 NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration), ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 National Architectural Association, ref1 National Health Service, United Kingdom, ref1 National Museum of Qatar, ref1 naturalistic decision making (NDM), ref1 negative heuristics, ref1 negative learning, ref1 Nepal school project, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7 Netherlands, ref1, ref2 New York Public Library, ref1, ref2 New York Review of Books, The, ref1 New York Times, The, ref1, ref2, ref3 New Yorker, The, ref1 Newsday, ref1 Newsom, Gavin, ref1 Newton, Isaac, ref1 NIMBY (not in my back yard), ref1 No Time to Die (movie), ref1 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, ref1 normal distribution (Gaussian), ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Norway, ref1, ref2 Nouvel, Jean, ref1 nuclear power, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13 Nuclear Regulation Authority, Japan, ref1 Obamacare, ref1 offshore wind farms, ref1, ref2 oil and gas projects, ref1, ref2, ref3 old project data, ref1 Olympic Fish, Barcelona, ref1 Olympic Games, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12 one-building architect, ref1, ref2 one of those, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries), ref1 opportunity costs, ref1 optimism, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6 Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), ref1 organization of the artist, ref1 Ørsted, Hans Christian, ref1 Ørsted (DONG Energy), Denmark, ref1, ref2 outside view (accuracy), ref1, ref2, ref3 overconfidence, ref1 overpass collapse, ref1 Paralympic Games, ref1 Parliament Building, Scotland, ref1 past projects, ref1 Paz del Río steel mill, Colombia, ref1 Pearl River Delta Economic Zone, ref1 PensionDanmark, ref1 Pentagon, ref1, ref2, ref3 Pentagon, The: A History (Vogel), ref1, ref2 Perrow, Charles, ref1 phronesis, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7 Piano, Renzo, ref1 pioneer companies, ref1 pipelines, ref1, ref2 Pixar Animation Studios, ref1 Pixar planning, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9 Planet (Planet Labs, Inc.), ref1 Planet Dove satellite, ref1 planning, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14, ref15, ref16, ref17, ref18 planning fallacy, ref1, ref2 planning fallacy writ large, ref1 Polanyi, Michael, ref1, ref2 politics, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6 positive heuristics, ref1, ref2 positive learning curve, ref1, ref2 postpandemic investment, ref1 Potomac River, ref1, ref2 Poulsen, Henrik, ref1 power bias, ref1, ref2 Power Broker, The: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (Caro), ref1 Power Mac G4 Cube computer, ref1 PR/FAQ (press release/frequently asked questions), ref1 presidential election of 1928, ref1 “Principle of the Hiding Hand, The” (Hirschman), ref1, ref2 Pritzker Architecture Prize, ref1 probability theory, ref1 Project Apollo, ref1 prospect theory, ref1 providential ignorance, ref1 psychological safety, ref1, ref2 psychology, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12 Pulitzer Prize, ref1 Quartermaster Depot site, ref1, ref2 R.J.

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Planning is iteration and learning before you deliver at full scale, with careful, demanding, extensive testing producing a plan that increases the odds of the delivery going smoothly and swiftly. It’s what Frank Gehry did for the Guggenheim Bilbao and has done for all his projects since. It’s what Pixar does to make each of its landmark movies. It’s what fast-growing wind and solar farms do in a global attempt to outcompete fossil fuels, as we will see later. And it’s the core of the lean startup model. Ries wrote that startups operate in an environment of “extreme uncertainty” in which it is impossible to know whether the product they have developed is one that consumers will value. “We must learn what customers really want,” he advised, “not what they say they want or what we think they should want.”

Ask Your Developer: How to Harness the Power of Software Developers and Win in the 21st Century
by Jeff Lawson
Published 12 Jan 2021

What that means is that every organization that hopes not just to survive but to succeed needs to understand how to innovate by building software, and how to hire and manage the people who build it. I’ve spent the last decade helping all kinds of companies, from Silicon Valley startups to Fortune 50 industrial behemoths, increase their chances of building game-changing innovations by adopting the principles outlined in my book The Lean Startup. As a result, I’ve often found myself trying to explain the semiconductor revolution to leaders who don’t understand software. Many still believe that this tsunami of disruption will somehow bypass their business. I once worked with a group of senior leaders from large hospital trade associations who were desperate to improve patient experience, but throughout our time together they made excuses for why that experience was so dismal.

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I’ve seen executives at great companies unintentionally sabotage their own digital success by doing (and not doing) things that disempower talent and kill innovation. I once advised a company that made household products. They were trying to figure out how to test a new product through a small pilot program. I suggested creating a minimum viable product, an MVP in Lean Startup terms, or a version of the product that’s good enough to allow a company to collect useful feedback about its value from a small number of consumers while still being fast and inexpensive to create. The idea was to use the MVP to gather information as quickly as possible in order to determine next steps in the development process.

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New features are turned on for 0.5 percent of customers to see how they like them. If the response is good, the company rolls the new feature out to more people. If something is wrong—a technical glitch or just plain dislike—the company rolls it back. That’s the essence of experimentation. It’s also the essence of the Lean Startup revolution started by Eric Ries, who wrote the foreword to this book. If you can try things in a low-risk way and quickly learn about your customers’ needs, why wouldn’t you? Rapid experimentation in software development is the most powerful aspect of Build vs. Die. It’s also why I describe it as a Darwinian process.

Think Like an Engineer: Use Systematic Thinking to Solve Everyday Challenges & Unlock the Inherent Values in Them
by Mushtak Al-Atabi
Published 26 Aug 2014

Adam Brimo, Co-founder of OpenLearning 11.6 Lean Entrepreneurship In the Return on Failure chapter we will discuss the importance of failure, through pushing the limits of what is possible, as a mechanism to seek feedback in order to fine tune the behaviour or the offering, and move on to higher levels of performance. The concept of “Lean Entrepreneurship” or “Lean Startup” represents one of the systematic techniques to yield a high Return on Failure. The concept is outlined in details in the book ‘The Lean Startup’ by Eric Ries. As entrepreneurs are always in search of repeatable, sustainable and scalable business models, the basic premise of the Lean Entrepreneurship is to quickly (and as cheaply as possible) build products and get them into the hands of customers so that entrepreneurs can measure, learn, and produce even better ideas that will help identify that repeatable, sustainable and scalable business model.

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As entrepreneurs are always in search of repeatable, sustainable and scalable business models, the basic premise of the Lean Entrepreneurship is to quickly (and as cheaply as possible) build products and get them into the hands of customers so that entrepreneurs can measure, learn, and produce even better ideas that will help identify that repeatable, sustainable and scalable business model. The evolutionary Build-MeasureLearn lean entrepreneurship cycle shown below needs to happen in the shortest time possible and with the minimum cost possible. Lean Startup Reduces the Time Taken for the Build-Measure-Learn Cycle (Source: The Lean Startup, Eric Ries) Kal Joffres is the co-founder of Tandemic, where he helps NGOs and companies such as Microsoft, Novo Nordisk, and Standard Chartered to leverage the power of open innovation and social innovation to create new products and services. His organisation maintains HATI, the largest database for NGOs in Malaysia.

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Although active in the NGOs and volunteering space, Kal admits that without putting a product in the hands of the customer, it is not likely to get the value proposition correct. “Let’s face it, your first idea is seldom your best one!” Kal said. Kal Joffres, Co-founder of Tandemic Realising that the real need is to develop a solution to help NGOs capitalise on the interest in volunteering as well as to train and manage volunteers, “do something good” used the lean startup principles to roll out a number of successful products including the “Super Volunteers Programme” where “super volunteers” help the NGOs organise and manage the other volunteers. Do Something Good Website 11.7 Funding Entrepreneurship No chapter about entrepreneurship is complete without a section on how to raise funds to support different entrepreneurial activities.

Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe
by Roger McNamee
Published 1 Jan 2019

This freed startups to focus on their real value added, the application that sat on top of the stack. Netflix, Box, Dropbox, Slack, and many other businesses were built on this model. Thus began the “lean startup” model. Without the huge expense and operational burden of creating a full tech infrastructure, new companies did not have to aim for perfection when they launched a new product, which had been Silicon Valley’s primary model to that point. For a fraction of the cost, they could create a minimum viable product (MVP), launch it, and see what happened. The lean startup model could work anywhere, but it worked best with cloud software, which could be updated as often as necessary.

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They could raise venture capital on favorable terms, hire a bigger team, improve the product, and spend to acquire more users. Or they could do what the founders of Instagram and WhatsApp would eventually do: sell out for billions with only a handful of employees. Facebook’s motto—“Move fast and break things”—embodies the lean startup philosophy. Forget strategy. Pull together a few friends, make a product you like, and try it in the market. Make mistakes, fix them, repeat. For venture investors, the lean startup model was a godsend. It allowed venture capitalists to identify losers and kill them before they burned through much cash. Winners were so valuable that a fund needed only one to provide a great return. When hardware and networks act as limiters, software must be elegant.

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The lean startup model could work anywhere, but it worked best with cloud software, which could be updated as often as necessary. The first major industry created with the new model was social media, the Web 2.0 startups that were building networks of people rather than pages. Every day after launch, founders would study the data and tweak the product in response to customer feedback. In the lean startup philosophy, the product is never finished. It can always be improved. No matter how rapidly a startup grew, AWS could handle the load, as it demonstrated in supporting the phenomenal growth of Netflix. What in earlier generations would have required an army of experienced engineers could now be accomplished by relatively inexperienced engineers with an email to AWS.

SAM: One Robot, a Dozen Engineers, and the Race to Revolutionize the Way We Build
by Jonathan Waldman
Published 7 Jan 2020

Before the summer wound down, Scott did three more things: He filed a patent (Nate, Tom, and the RPI engineers’ names accompanied his on the paperwork); met with the owners of Hydro-Mobile, who steered him to the annual industry trade show called World of Concrete; and interviewed a wild Lebanese man named Rocky. He also read more start-up books: one about Google, one about Steve Jobs, one about GM’s decline, and another called The Lean Startup. Of all the entrepreneurial books he eventually read, this was the most important. Conventional wisdom, which spewed forth from places like GM and Kodak, was: Thy products shall not be released until perfect, lest we disappoint customers and harm our reputation. Eric Ries, the young Yale-educated author of The Lean Startup, argued for proceeding unconventionally. Ries, whose first two companies had failed, proposed abandoning the quest toward the perfect thing; instead, he said, CEOs should aspire to build an MVP, or minimum viable product.

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Because learning customer preferences outweighed whiteboard strategizing, and because idealizing an MVP challenged the traditional notion of quality, Ries said the path he was advocating felt dangerous. Indeed, proceeding down that path came with risks—of the legal and branding and morale varieties—and so Ries said that following the Lean Startup approach took courage. But he argued that the path wasn’t as risky as it seemed. The fear that a big bad competitor might swoop in and steal a start-up’s idea, he said, was largely imagined. A good start-up, adept at quickly building-measuring-learning, would always outdo the competition, regardless of what they knew, because the key to success was the ability to learn fast.

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He could handle bumps, swim through ripples and waves and even swells. There’d be no avoiding mistakes, and rather than fear them, or Monday-morning-quarterbacking himself crazy, he thought learning and moving on sounded pretty good. As he put it later, “It doesn’t matter if it fails. It matters if we learn. It’s all about evolution.” The Lean Startup approach, though, was unmistakably if not expressly intended for start-ups selling software to consumers. Scott knew this; still, he figured he’d take the approach and use it at Construction Robotics, which was to make hardware for businesses. The differences were not negligible. Hardware is expensive, difficult to change, and very expensive to change quickly.

The Jobs to Be Done Playbook: Align Your Markets, Organization, and Strategy Around Customer Needs
by Jim Kalbach
Published 6 Apr 2020

Once you have a solution, you can conduct more elaborate experiments of concepts and features. A so-called “minimum viable product” (MVP) can provide a wealth of business insight without having to build or launch anything. Think of a MVP as the shortest path to learning, not as building a product. Eric Ries, author of The Lean Startup, which describes a complete approach for business to mimic the experimental behavior of startups, explains in his book:12 The minimum viable product is that version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort....

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This book contains a wealth of practical details on how to run Lean experiments. Maurya has laid out a clear path for validating business concepts and product ideas. While he only briefly mentions JTBD in this volume, Maurya uses jobs thinking in his trainings and talks. For more on business experimentation in general, also see: Eric Ries, The Lean Startup, New York: Crown, 2011; Steve Blank, Four Steps to the Epiphany, K & S Ranch, 2005; and Michael Schrage, The Innovator’s Hypothesis, Cambridge: MIT Press, 2014. Case Study: CarMax By Jake Mitchell, Principal Product Designer at CarMax “Could you look at another picture?” The research participant clicked the “next” arrow and an image of a car for sale appeared on the screen in front of them.

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WATCH OUT: In commercial settings it’s very challenging to isolate variables in your experimentation. You may get feedback that is potentially misleading or doesn’t show direct causality. False positives and false negatives are common. SEE: • Travis Lowdermilk and Jessica Rich. The Customer-Driven Playbook (O’Reilly, 2017) • Ash Maurya. Running Lean (O’Reilly, 2012) • Eric Ries. The Lean Startup (Crown, 2011) • Steve Blank. Four Steps to the Epiphany, 2nd Ed (K & S Ranch, 2013) • Michael Schrage. The Innovator’s Hypothesis (MIT Press, 2014) Delivering Value 1. Map the consumption journey Journey maps show the interaction that customers have with your brand or offering. The intent of a journey map is to illustrate the consumption jobs that customers have.

Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One
by Jenny Blake
Published 14 Jul 2016

As much as we began from similar places of dissatisfaction, our stories all have something in common with how we proceeded, too. We each shifted to new, related work by leveraging our existing base of strengths, interests, and experience. Though it might seem as if each of us made drastic changes, we were not starting from scratch. In Silicon Valley parlance, we pivoted. Eric Ries, author of the business bible The Lean Startup, defines a business pivot as “a change in strategy without a change in vision.” I define a career pivot as doubling down on what is working to make a purposeful shift in a new, related direction. Pivoting, as we will refer to it in this book, is an intentional, methodical process for nimbly navigating career changes.

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I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is often a step forward.” CHAPTER 8: GET SCRAPPY What Small Experiments Can You Run? What Real-World Data Can You Collect? If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them. —Henry David Thoreau, Walden IN THE LEAN STARTUP, ERIC RIES POPULARIZED THE CONCEPT OF THE MVP, OR MINIMUM VIABLE PRODUCT. By his definition, the MVP “helps entrepreneurs start the process of learning as quickly as possible. It is not necessarily the smallest product imaginable, though; it is simply the fastest way to get through the Build-Measure-Learn feedback loop with the minimum amount of effort.”

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Pink Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb The Second Machine Age by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee The Antidote by Oliver Burkeman The Start-Up of You by Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha Plant The Power of Full Engagement by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz Finding Your Own North Star by Martha Beck The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks Body of Work by Pamela Slim Choose Yourself by James Altucher Scan So Good They Can’t Ignore You by Cal Newport The First 20 Hours by Josh Kaufman Tribes by Seth Godin Stand Out by Dorie Clark Essentialism by Greg McKeown Pilot The Lean Startup by Eric Ries Eat That Frog! by Brian Tracy Business Model You by Tim Clark, with Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur Making Ideas Happen by Scott Belsky The War of Art by Steven Pressfield Launch Smartcuts by Shane Snow The Dip by Seth Godin Outrageous Openness by Tosha Silver The Intuitive Way by Penney Peirce Playing Big by Tara Mohr Lead Conscious Business by Fred Kofman The Work Revolution by Julie Clow How Google Works by Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg The Alliance by Reid Hoffman, Ben Casnocha, and Chris Yeh The Coaching Habit by Michael Bungay Stanier NOTES INTRODUCTION Pivot Is the New Normal People are no longer working: Tyler Cowen, “A Dearth of Investment in Young Workers,” New York Times, September 7, 2013, www.nytimes.com/2013/09/08/business/a-dearth-of-investment-in-young-workers.html.

Abolish Silicon Valley: How to Liberate Technology From Capitalism
by Wendy Liu
Published 22 Mar 2020

One team exercise where we were supposed to brainstorm our corporate values was a total setup, because Liam, Nick and I had agreed on the words ahead of time; we just wanted to know what Tim would say. I threw out “lean”, expecting it to be an easy one — we’d all read Eric Ries’ seminal book Lean Startup, and we even had two copies in our office, the extra copy being perhaps ironically superfluous yet symbolic — but Tim bristled. He retorted that we were glamorising efficiency and leanness to the point of absurdity. I was taken aback, and I suggested (good Lord) that he read Lean Startup again. After that, the atmosphere — already on a knife-edge — soured beyond repair. Days passed by in near silence, with in-person exchanges limited to perfunctory greetings; work conversations took place primarily over Slack.

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He had no qualms about asking people for advice or money, whereas I would rather die than send a cold email. He wasn’t sure of our long-term vision yet, but he thought we could start by selling to all the social media analytics companies in the local area and iteratively learn from there, following the “Lean Startup” model proposed by entrepreneur Eric Ries. Nick was confident that we would be profitable by September. Our first step was to incorporate. We set up as a Delaware C-Corp, which we knew was common for tech startups, as it simplified raising money from US investors and also lowered our tax bill.

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My next few days were spent looking through the Twitter followers of accounts like Vogue and Sephora to find candidates for these cartoonishly vague marketing personas. Was this constant pivoting a sign of being outmanoeuvred by bigger companies wanting to outsource grunt work to a naive startup? Or was it a principled, “Lean Startup”-approved strategy for inching towards product-market fit? What was the difference? I mostly ignored the business side to focus on the battleground of our technical infrastructure; I was up to my ears in customer complaints about our API. The others could figure out our go-to-market strategy. February of 2015 felt like the seasonal equivalent of the trough of sorrow: the bitter wind howling at the horizon, the icy air making every breath sharp.

Doing Good Better: How Effective Altruism Can Help You Make a Difference
by William MacAskill
Published 27 Jul 2015

Moreover, as things progress, these variables shift: you’re constantly gaining new information; and new, often entirely unexpected, opportunities and problems arise. Because of this, armchair reasoning about what will and won’t happen isn’t very useful. In the case of entrepreneurship, Eric Ries has argued forcefully for this idea and created the popular Lean Startup movement. The idea behind the Lean Startup is that many entrepreneurs make the mistake of getting excited about some product or idea and then doing everything they can to push it onto the world even before they’ve tested it to see if there’s a market for it. When companies do this, products often fail because they were reasoning from the armchair when they should have been experimenting.

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think of career decisions like an entrepreneur would think about starting a company: Jess Whittlestone, “Your Career Is Like a Startup,” 80,000 Hours (blog), https://80000hours.org/2013/07/your-career-is-like-a-startup/. This idea was independently proposed by LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman and entrepreneur Ben Casnocha in their book The Start-up of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, and Transform Your Career (New York: Crown Business, 2012). the popular Lean Startup movement: Eric Ries, The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses (New York: Crown Business, 2011). (entrepreneurs have less than a 10 percent chance of ever selling their shares in the company at profit): Ryan Carey, “The Payoff and Probability of Obtaining Venture Capital,” 80,000 Hours (blog), June 25, 2014, https://80000hours.org/2014/06/the-payoff-and-probability-of-obtaining-venture-capital/.

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A., 67–68 Hong Kong, 131 Humane League, 143, 190 Humane Society of the United States Farm Animal Protection Campaign, 190 Hurford, Peter, 147, 154–55, 157, 160–61 Idealist, 55 immigration, 187–89 immunization programs, 46–47 impact of causes, measurement of, 34 implementation of charities, 109, 117–18 improving lives as measure of impact, 34 income and food purchases, 20 global average of, 49 global income distribution, 48–49, 49 income inequality, 15–25, 16, 18, 50 pledging ten percent of, 199 richest 10 percent of world, 23 and well-being, 21, 21–23 India, 20, 123, 130 Indigenous, 132 Industrial Revolution, 131 inefficiencies of aid, 45–46 Innovations for Poverty Action Lab, 9, 105, 115 insulation and carbon footprint, 136 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 95, 98, 179 International Christian Support (now called Investing in Children and Their Societies; ICS), 6–7 international labor mobility, 187–89, 194 intestinal worms, 8–9, 183 Iodine Global Network (IGN), 126–27, 127 Islam, Habiba, 167 Ivory Coast, 104, 123 Japan earthquakes and tsunamis in, 58–59 and Fukushima disaster, 79–80, 83–84 homicide rate in, 185 Japanese Red Cross Society, 59 Jay-Z, 3 Jenner, Edward, 69 Jobs, Steve, 149, 152 juvenile crime, 70–74 Kahneman, Daniel, 173 Kaposi’s sarcoma, 52, 52–53 Karnofsky, Holden, 12 Kendrick, Pearl, 171 Kenya, 105, 122, 123, 170–71 Kerry, John, 179 Kilian, Bernard, 134 Kremer, Michael, 5–9, 11, 108 Kristof, Nicholas D., 130 Krugman, Paul, 131 Kuyichi, 132 Laos, 130 law of diminishing returns, 58–61, 62–66 Lean Startup movement, 159 legal profession as career choice, 164 Levitt, Steven, 84–86 Lewis, Greg and earning to give, 74–78 on impact of medicine, 62–66, 74–75, 76 medical ambitions of, 55, 56 life expectancies, 19, 45 Lipeyah, Paul, 6–7 literacy, 103–4 lives saved by doctors, 63–66, 75 Living Goods, 125–26, 127 lower-bound reasoning, 91 low-probablity events, 83–84 malaria and bed nets, 52, 53, 112, 113–14, 117 deaths from, 46–47, 60 and expected values, 81–82 funding dedicated to, 61–62 and program implementation, 117 See also Against Malaria Foundation marginal utility, 57–58 marketing careers, 165, 167 Massachusetts, 87 Mather, Rob, 157, 177 Matthews, Dylan, 174 measles, 121 meat and meat consumption, 136, 141–43 media coverage of disasters and causes, 59–60 medicine as career choice, 164 mega-charities, 120 Mercy for Animals, 143, 175, 190 Mexico, 133, 137 microcredit/microloans, 114–15 micromorts, 82–83 migrants, 187–89 Miliband, Ed, 90 missions of charities, 109, 110 Monbiot, George, 137–38, 140 Montagnier, Luc, 171 Montenegro, Claudio, 188 monthly donations, 197 moral licensing, 144–46 motivation, altruistic, 166–67 Moyo, Dambisa, 43, 44, 45, 46, 50 Mozambique, 3, 104, 123 M-Pesa system, 105 Mulder, Frederick, 177 National Area Health Education Center Organization, 63 National Mobilization Against Sweatshops, 129 natural disasters, 80 natural gas, 136 neglectedness of problems/causes, 181, 183 neglected tropical diseases, 183 Net Impact, 55 New Hampshire, 86 Niehaus, Paul, 169 Niemi, Niina, 134 Nigeria, 188 Nike, 129 Noda, Yoshihiko, 80 nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), 77 Nordhaus, William, 170 normal distributions in statistics, 47–48, 48 Norwood, Bailey, 141–42 No Sweat Apparel, 129 Nothing But Nets, 113–14 Nuclear Threat Initiative, 194 Obama, Barack, 179 objections to charitable giving, 40–41 Occupy Wall Street, 15 offsetting greenhouse gases emissions, 137–40 One Foundation, 3 100x Multiplier, 15–25, 62, 66 “the 1 percent,” 15–18 One Water, 3 Orbinski, James, 29–34 Ord, Toby, 12 outsourcing of jobs, 165 overhead costs of charities, 106 Oxfam, 120 Parliament (MP), value of career in, 90–94 passion and career choices, 149–53, 154 Penna, Robert M., 40 People Tree, 132 personal fit with problems/causes, 41–43, 148–55, 181 Peru, 191 Pew Charitable Trusts, 187 pigs and pork, 141–42, 143 Piketty, Thomas, 15 plastic bags, 136 PlayPumps, 1–5, 9–10, 47 PlayPumps International, 2–3, 11 polio, 121 political careers, 89–94, 174 political causes, 182 political rally participation, 88 poor countries and career choices, 76–78 cost effectiveness of programs in, 62, 121 and fair-trade products, 133 and law of diminishing returns, 61 lives saved by doctors in, 66 and sweatshop laborers, 131–32 presidential election of 2008, 85 preventable diseases, deaths from, 46–47, 60 Pritchett, Lant, 188 programming skills, 161, 164 Public Broadcasting System (PBS), 5 quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) concept of, 34–39 and cost-effectiveness evaluations, 112 and evidence behind claims of programs, 116–17 graphs illustrating, 35, 36 and lives saved by doctors, 63, 65 Quirk, Lincoln, 170 Quoidbach, Jordi, 150–51 Rath, Pim Srey, 130 regression to the mean, 73–74 Reid, Harry, 179 research, funding spent on, 110 research careers, 171–73 rich countries cost effectiveness for programs in, 62 and easily preventable diseases, 62 lives saved by doctors in, 66 Ries, Eric, 159 Round-about Water Solutions, 5 Rumsfeld, Donald, 44 Rwandan genocide, 29–32 Sachs, Jeffrey, 131 sacrifices in altruism, 12 sales careers, 165, 167 Salvation Army, 32–33 scale of problems/causes, 181 Scared Straight program, 70–74, 114 Schindler’s List (1993), 196–97 Schistosomiasis Control Initiative founder of, 157 GiveWell’s endorsement of, 124–25, 127, 197 and neglected tropical diseases, 183 scientific research careers, 171–73 Shapiro, Arnold, 70–71 Silver, Nate, 85 Singapore, 131 SKAT, 11 Skoll Global Threats Fund, 99 slavery, 94–95 smallpox, eradication of, 45–46, 47, 67–69, 121 social cost of greenhouse gas emissions, 97–98 software engineering, 164 Solar Radiation Management Governance Initiative, 193 Somalia, 68 South Africa, 2, 3 South Korea, 131 Soviet Union, 68–69 Spain, 136 Stern Review, 190–91 Stocker, Thomas F., 179 strokes, 35 Stuiver, Ronnie, 1 sub-Saharan Africa health education in, 104 life expectancy in, 45 and Against Malaria Foundation, 125 and Schistosomiasis Control Initiative, 124 supply and demand, law of, 87–88 Swaziland, 3 SweatFree Communities, 129 sweatshops, 128–32 alternatives to, 132 conditions in, 129, 130 desirability of jobs in, 130–31 economic pressures of, 130 and extreme poverty, 130, 132 Swiss Resource Centre and Consultancies for Development (SKAT), 3–4 Taiwan, 131 Taleb, Nassim, 98 Teach for America, 55 Tea Party rallies, 89 technology oriented careers, 163, 164 tenure, 153 testing effectiveness of programs, 74 textbooks, 7, 103–4, 108–9 Thailand, 130 Theroux, Louis, 78 thinking at the margin, 57 Time magazine, 3 tractability of problems/causes, 181, 182–83 trade professions, 165 travel, carbon foot print from, 136, 137–38 Trigg, Jason, 166 tsunamis, 58, 79 tuberculosis, 60 Tversky, Amos, 173 Uganda and fair-trade products, 134 and GiveDirectly, 105, 122 and Living Goods, 125 Under the Knife (2007), 78 UNICEF, 3–4, 11, 120, 132 United Kingdom affluence of, 17 homicide rate in, 185 medical students in, 55 political careers in, 174 and social cost of greenhouse gas emissions, 97 value of political careers in, 90–94 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, 191 United States benefits from medicine in, 63, 65 career choices in, 164 and climate change, 191 cost effectiveness for programs in, 62 and factory farms, 190 and fair-trade products, 134 greenhouse gases of, 135 homicide rate in, 185 income and income inequality in, 15–16, 17, 22 and Industrial Revolution, 131 infrastructure costs in, 46 lives saved by doctors in, 75 medical students in, 55 poverty in, 18, 184 and presidential election of 2008, 85 and quality of goods, 20 and social cost of greenhouse gas emissions, 97 social security spending of, 44 and sweatshop laborers, 131–32 and value of charitable giving, 22 voting in, 84–87 United Students Against Sweatshops, 129 United Way, 33–34 University of Chicago Crime Lab, 187 University of Oxford Geoengineering Programme, 193 US Department of Labor, 132 US Department of Transportation, 46 US Environmental Protection Agency, 46 US Food and Drug Administration, 46 vaccination programs, 118 Valkila, Joni, 134 vegetarianism, 87–88, 141–43, 175 Virginia, 86 volunteering, 175–76 voting, expected value of, 84–87 Washington State Institute for Public Policy, 72 water, 1–5, 56–57 Watts, Alan, 149–50 Wave, 170–71 well-being, subjective assessments of, 21, 21–23, 39–40 Well-Being-Adjusted Life Years (WALYs), 39–40 What If Money Was No Object (YouTube video), 149 The White Man’s Burden (Easterly), 43 Whittlestone, Jess, 168 Wikipedia, 175 Wilson, Timothy, 150–51 Winfrey, Oprah, 55 World Bank, 60, 134 World Bank Development Marketplace Award, 2 World Health Organization (WHO), 60, 69 WorldVision, 120 World War II, 98 Wozniak, Steve, 152 Yunus, Muhammad, 114 Zambia, 3 Zhdanov, Viktor, 68–69 Zimbabwe Bush Pump, 4 Looking for more?

This Is Service Design Doing: Applying Service Design Thinking in the Real World: A Practitioners' Handbook
by Marc Stickdorn , Markus Edgar Hormess , Adam Lawrence and Jakob Schneider
Published 12 Jan 2018

The stakeholders then see their concepts fail with their own eyes (or succeed, but then it was you and your team that needed that validation). 64 Build-measure-learn cycles can be traced back at least as far as Galileo and the dawn of the scientific method, with incarnations like the Deming cycle from the 1950s or the more recent Lean Startup. See Moen, R. (2009). “Foundation and History of the PDSA Cycle,” Ries, E. (2011) and The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses. Crown Books. 65 The points here are presented from a service design perspective. For a great resource on building effective teams, check out Duhigg, C. (2016).

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TISDT is a book I refer to during work and it would be a great experience to be part of creating the new chapter for it. I’d like to help and give back from my experience from being a big enterprise company how I see this integrating. I’ve been managing a business R&D unit working with the use of Lean Startup, Design Thinking and SD. I have practical experience of introducing these methods in the corporate environment, I saw some good patterns and pitfalls while doing that. Doing is the hard bit! I’ve got about 18 years of experience in design and development. The last 8 years have been in a SD capacity.

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Other people might talk about design thinking, service design thinking, new marketing, UX design, holistic UX, CX design, human-centered design, customer experience management, experience design, touchpoint management, lean UX, new service development, new product development, customer journey work, or innovation, to name a few. Others will notice similarities with lean startup and agile development methodologies. We don’t care what you call it – what matters is what you do and how you do it. Still, you might want to watch out, because some people have very strong opinions about what exactly terms like service design and design thinking and all those others really mean.

The Geek Way: The Radical Mindset That Drives Extraordinary Results
by Andrew McAfee
Published 14 Nov 2023

This seems like a guaranteed way not to have satisfied customers. Why, then, has the lean startup approach been so successful? The idea of a “minimum viable product” has become widespread enough among startups that it’s become an acronym; entrepreneurs everywhere talk about what their MVP should be. The success of the lean startup approach depends in part on finding early customers who are tolerant of faults and rapid changes. But most of the success stems from the value of feedback and rapid iteration. Ries and countless others in the lean startup movement have learned that customers will stick with you and work with you if you do two things: give them a product that—even if it’s flawed—satisfies a real need, and keep improving that product over time.

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As Wujec describes, “What kindergartners do differently is that they start with the marshmallow, and they build prototypes, successive prototypes, always keeping the marshmallow on top, so they have multiple times to fix when they build prototypes along the way… With each version, kids get instant feedback about what works and what doesn’t work.” In his breakout 2011 book, The Lean Startup, Eric Ries advocates that entrepreneurs should act like kindergartners making marshmallow towers: they should make something quickly, get it to customers, get feedback from them about what works and what doesn’t, and incorporate this feedback as they quickly make the next version. The obvious objections to this approach are that many customers don’t like getting a buggy prototype instead of a polished and finished product, nor do they like using something that changes over time instead of remaining constant.

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The obvious objections to this approach are that many customers don’t like getting a buggy prototype instead of a polished and finished product, nor do they like using something that changes over time instead of remaining constant. Ries acknowledges these objections. As he writes about the first company where he tried the lean startup approach: We do everything wrong: instead of spending years perfecting our technology, we build a minimum viable product, an early product that is terrible, full of bugs and crash-your-computer-yes-really stability problems. Then we ship it to customers way before it’s ready. And we charge money for it.

Do More Faster: TechStars Lessons to Accelerate Your Startup
by Brad Feld and David Cohen
Published 18 Oct 2010

Take all the inputs you can gather and then make the decisions that feel right to both your head and your gut. Ryan McIntyre offers potentially conflicting advice at TechStars in 2009. Progress Equals Validated Learning Eric Ries Eric is the co-founder and CTO of IMVU and is the author of The Lean Startup Methodology. Would you rather have $30,000 or $1,000,000 in revenues for your startup? Sounds like a no-brainer, but I'd like to try and convince you that it's not. This may sound crazy, coming as it does from an advocate of charging customers for your product from Day One. I have counseled innumerable entrepreneurs to change their focus to revenue, and many companies that refuse this advice get themselves into trouble by running out of time.

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But as Eric points out, the measures of progress are often wrong and misleading, especially at the early stages. Using the filter of “validated learning” (namely—something that you've learned that you know is true) is a powerful frame of reference that forces more discipline into the discussion. We've gotten to know Eric well over the past few years and think his work on the Lean Startup Methodology is incredible. We encourage all entrepreneurs to become disciples of Eric. The Plural of Anecdote Is Not Data Brad Feld Brad is a managing director at Foundry Group and one of the co-founders of TechStars. A phrase that is often heard around TechStars is “the plural of anecdote is not data.”

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EventVue raised $500,000 from angel investors after completing TechStars in 2007 but ultimately shut down. All startups have too many available choices. It's the fundamental challenge of a startup—what customers to choose, what problem to solve, what flow to present to the user. Several methodologies have recently emerged, such as Eric Ries's lean startups to help guide you through the critical market and product decisions that drive you toward the promised land of hockey stick growth. But these methodologies fail to directly address an absolutely crucial component of doing a startup: how to keep everyone excited about your company. In my firsthand experience with EventVue and my experience watching other TechStars companies, I've come to understand that the magic to keeping and growing momentum in your startup is knowing what to celebrate.

Dual Transformation: How to Reposition Today's Business While Creating the Future
by Scott D. Anthony and Mark W. Johnson
Published 27 Mar 2017

To optimize the kite, the Wrights built a simple wind tunnel, which made it much easier to run experiments. Fortunately, the past decade has concurrently seen an explosion of tools to help design and execute experiments and a rapid decline in the cost of these experiments. Books like Steve Blank’s Four Steps to the Epiphany, Eric Ries’s The Lean Startup, and coauthor Scott Anthony’s The First Mile provide practical toolkits to systematically de-risk an idea. The basic idea behind all these books is to apply the scientific method to strategic uncertainty. The First Mile uses two acronyms to explain the process. The first is DEFT, which stands for document, evaluate, focus, and test.

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Rather, in his career Blank has actively participated in more than a dozen startups and by now has mentored hundreds more. Over the past decade he has emerged as a prominent thought leader, describing how to take a more scientific approach to the creation of new businesses. One of his mentees, Eric Ries, wrote the 2011 book The Lean Startup, which has become a must-read for almost any entrepreneur. The epigraph in Blank’s 2013 book with Bob Dorf (The Startup Owner’s Manual) says it all: “Get out of the building!” It is hard to become more curious when the stimuli you receive is limited to the thick carpets of the executive floor or the five-star hotel you stay at on road trips.

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The discipline of testing: Anthony, The First Mile; Steven Gary Blank and Bob Dorf, The Startup Owner’s Manual: The Step-by-Step Guide for Building a Great Company (Pescadero, CA: K&S Ranch, 2012); Rita Gunther McGrath and Ian C. MacMillan, Discovery-Driven Growth: A Breakthrough Process to Reduce Risk and Seize Opportunity (Boston: Harvard Business Press, 2009); Eric Ries, The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses (New York: Crown Business, 2011). Chapter 4 Paul Graham quote: Startupquote.com, http://startupquote.com/post/10855215114. Medtronic and Plunify case examples: Scott D. Anthony, “The New Corporate Garage,” Harvard Business Review, September 2012.

Platform Revolution: How Networked Markets Are Transforming the Economy--And How to Make Them Work for You
by Sangeet Paul Choudary , Marshall W. van Alstyne and Geoffrey G. Parker
Published 27 Mar 2016

Thus, a seemingly abstract metric like user distance may have a highly practical, dollars-and-cents impact on your bottom line. STAGE 3: METRICS DURING THE MATURITY PHASE Once a platform business has moved past the phases of startup and early growth, new challenges and issues emerge. Eric Ries, the writer and entrepreneur known for pioneering the “lean startup” movement, emphasizes that, for the mature company, incremental innovation and metrics must be closely related to each other. “When making improvements to your product,” Ries observes, “the only arbiter of whether or not it was successful is the metrics. And, when you are implementing an improvement to your product, you should be testing that improvement against a baseline.”

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Having learned from this mistake, Gary Swart, former CEO of oDesk, writes eloquently about the need for highly focused metrics, especially in the critical early period of a startup: As a business leader you need to figure out the metric that matters most for your company and understand that the more you measure, the less prioritized you’ll be. Don’t fall into the trap of trying to measure everything. What I’ve learned is that in the early days, what matters most is having customers who love and use your product. Figure out the one or two best measures to determine this.17 Lean startup guru Eric Ries echoes the need to be selective in the design and use of metrics. In particular, he cautions against what he calls “vanity metrics,” such as total sign-ups—a relatively meaningless statistic that often increases even as the volume of interactions is flat or actually declining. Vanity metrics fail to indicate accurately whether the business is really achieving critical mass or the liquidity it needs.

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Teresa Torres, “Why the BranchOut Decline Isn’t Surprising,” Product Talk, June 7, 2012, http://www.producttalk.org/2012/06/why-the-branchout-decline-isnt-surpising/. 4. John Egan, “Anatomy of a Failed Growth Hack,” John Egan blog, December 6, 2012, http://jwegan.com/growth-hacking/autopsy-of-a-failed-growth-hack/. 5. Derek Sivers, “The Lean Startup—by Eric Ries,” Derek Sivers blog, October 23, 2011, https://sivers.org/book/LeanStartup. 6. Alistair Croll and Benjamin Yoskovitz, Lean Analytics: Use Data to Build a Better Startup Faster (Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media, 2013). 7. Christian Rudder, “The Mathematics of Beauty,” OkTrends: Dating Research from OkCupid, January 10, 2011, http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/the-mathematics-of-beauty/. 8.

Long Game: How Long-Term Thinker Shorthb
by Dorie Clark
Published 14 Oct 2021

If customers were interested—if they were willing to download it or use it or maybe even pay for it—that was evidence that there was something there, and you could safely start allocating your time to make it better. But if no one bit? Best to just move on, so you didn’t waste time or money or energy. Blank’s concepts, popularized in a 2011 book by Eric Ries, eventually became known as the lean startup methodology. This simple philosophy—test before you fully invest—took Silicon Valley by storm, making processes there far more efficient. But it turns out, it’s also applicable in our own lives. All too often, smart professionals hesitate to put their “thing”—whether it’s an article, a new website, a talk, an idea—out into the world.

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“It’s not quite ready yet,” they’ll say, or “I’m still making a few tweaks,” or “It needs a little more time.” That’s fine up to a point; you don’t want to release something into the world that’s awful, or so rough that it’s unintelligible. But after a while, this kind of thinking becomes an excuse that can hold us back. The lesson we can learn from Silicon Valley and the lean startup methodology is that we should, in the early days, treat everything as an experiment. Failure is upsetting to so many of us because it implies finality: you tried to accomplish something, and it didn’t happen. But an experiment, which you recognize from the beginning has an uncertain outcome, can hardly be called a failure.

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See also networks and networking connectors, 150–151 content creation, 103–105, 118–119 gaining recognition through, 125 leveraging, 126–127 Corcoran, Marlena, 83–84 CORE Leadership Program, 63 costs opportunity, 45–46 physical/emotional, 46–47 Covid-19 pandemic, 3–5, 87 creating, 103–105 Crenshaw, Dave, 27–29, 197–198 culture going against the prevailing, 29 on our calling, 56 curiosity, 210 customer service, 40–41 Cutruzzula, Kara, 103–104 Davies, Ali, 24 deadlines, 88–89, 187–188 deception phase of exponential growth, 166–167 delayed gratification, 193–196 Deloitte, 63 Del Val, Dayna, 181–184 Design the Life You Love workshop, 110–111 Diamandis, Peter, 165–166 DiBernardo, Albert, 106, 200–201 Dierickx, Constance, 60–61 Dijksterhuis, Ap, 117–118 distance to empty, 197–199 diversity, long- vs. short-term thinking about, 6–7 documentary filmmaking, 57–58 Do It for Yourself (Cutruzzula), 104 dorieclark.com, 221 Drucker, Peter, 110, 117 Edison, Thomas, 181 Edmondson, Amy, 119 Edwards, Sue, 57–58 email, 21–22 emotional costs, 46–47 The E-Myth Revisited (Gerber), 102 e-newsletters, 220–221 Entrepreneurial You (Clark), 5, 99, 147, 220 entrepreneurship, learning, 101–103 Etsy, 62 execution mode, 3 hidden benefits of, 22–25 expectations, 168–169 experimentation, 15 20% time for, 14, 74–78 failure and, 180–181 expertise, recognition for, 125–127 exploration, 73–93 20% time for, 14, 74–78 carving out time for, 82–85 life portfolios and, 78–80 of New York City, 73–74, 81–82 realizing dreams through, 85–92 exponential growth, 165–167 exponential technologies, 165–166 failure, 9, 15 extreme goals and, 173–179 finding alternatives and, 184–187 involving your community and, 188–190 looking foolish and, 66–67 minimum benefit and, 90 multiple paths and, 181–184 resilience and, 211 rethinking, 173–190 family, 47–48 leveraging for, 120 meaning-based goals and, 55–56 prioritizing, 27–28 saying no and, 39, 46 Feingold, Sarah, 61–62 Fernandez, Jenny, 139–140, 149 Ferrazzi, Keith, 102 Ferriss, Tim, 23 focus, 14–15, 53 deciding what to be bad at and, 39–41 heads-up/heads-down strategy for, 99–100 on money, 55 strategic leverage and, 112, 115–128 thinking in waves and, 95–113 time for exploring, 73–93 Fogg, BJ, 195 FOMO (fear of missing out), 34, 47–48 Forbes, 97–98 Fowlds, Samantha, 205–206 Freestyle Love Supreme Academy, 65–66 Frei, Frances, 40–41 Friedman, Stew, 119 Fun Home (musical), 74 gatekeepers, 161–162 Gautam, Tanvi, 138–139 Gerber, Michael, 102 Germanotta, Stefani, 192 Getting Things Done (Allen), 29–30 Gino, Francesca, 133–134, 149 Give and Take (Grant), 141 Gmail, 75 goals, 14–15, 53 20% time and, 82–85 based on the kind of person you want to be, 65–67 coaches for, 86–88 deadlines for, 88–89 deciding what to be bad at and, 39–41 dreams and, 85–92 evaluating opportunities based on, 38–39 evaluating what you’re doing now and, 59–61 exploring, 92 extreme, 67–72, 173–179 failure and, 173–179 forgetting what others think and, 63–65 getting support for, 86 leveraging for professional, 122–123 optimizing for interesting, 14, 56–59 perseverance and, 157 planning around your priorities and, 27–30 remembering why you started and, 61–63 setting, 55–72 strategic overindexing and, 96–98 time frames for, 90–92 tracking data on, 115–116 Godin, Seth, 171 Goldsmith, Marshall, 109–112, 117 Good Morning America (TV show), 145–146 Good to Great (Collins), 102 Google, 159 20% time at, 14, 74–78 News, 75 X, 76–78 Granovetter, Mark, 132 Grant, Adam, 141 gratification, short-term vs. long-term, 13, 193–196 Gulati, Daniel, 147 Guthier, Christina, 122–123 habits, tiny, 195 Hagel, John, 34 Hall, Jeffrey, 132 Hamilton (musical), 65–66 Harry Potter (Rowling), 161 Harvard Business Review, 97–98, 137, 159 heads-up/heads-down strategy, 99–100 hedonic adaptation, 160 “Hell yeah or no” strategy, 35–37 Hersey, Paul, 109–110 Hesselbein, Frances, 110 Hill, Napoleon, 184 Horn, Sam, 187, 188 Incontrera, Marie, 70–71 information asking for, to evaluate opportunities, 42–44 attention to, 25 hoarding, 12 networking and, 107–108 innovation exponential growth and, 165–166 feature, 7 life portfolios in, 78–80 making time for, 14 space for, 29–30 interest optimizing for, 14, 56–59 setting goals based on, 59–61 time for exploring, 73–78 introverts, 107–108 jazz album, 146–149 Joel, Mitch, 144–145 Johnson, Rukiya, 55–56 Kalin, Rob, 62 KashKlik, 142–143 Kaur, Manbir, 46–47 Kim, W. Chan, 179 Klein, Joe, 176 Kleinert, Jared, 99 Kolber, Petra, 85–86, 88–90 Konnikova, Maria, 194 Kotler, Steven, 165–166 Lader, Linda, 96 Lader, Phil, 96 Lady Gaga, 192 Lake Wobegon effect, 40 Last, Becky, 84–85 Lazarus, Bruce, 74 lean startup methodology, 180–181 learning 20% time and, 92 avoiding doing by, 103 career wave of, 100, 101–103 continuous, 89–90 looking foolish during, 66–67 the next thing, 110–112 online, 5 setting extreme goals and, 67–72 Leonard, George, 167 leverage, 112, 115–128 of currency you have, 124–128 for lifestyle, 120–122 for professional goals, 122–124 for relationships, 120 life portfolios, 78–80 lifestyle, leveraging for, 120–122 Limitless (Otting), 143 Lindstrom, Martin, 6–7 Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 8 long-term thinking character and, 209–210 flexibility and, 6 foundational skills for, 195 for goals, 90–92 keys to, 209–211 optimizing for, 127–128 for personal life, 8–16 relevance of, 4 magical thinking, 28 Makabee, Hayim, 142–143, 149 Management Research Group, 21 Marion Stoddart: The Work of 1000 (documentary), 57–58 Marsh, Kris, 140–141 Marshall Goldsmith 100 Coaches (MG100), 111–112 marshmallow study, 193–194 Mary Baldwin University, 201–202 mastermind groups, 184–187 Mauborgne, Renée, 179 Mayer, Marissa, 75 McKinsey, 21 meaning optimizing for interesting and, 56–59 remembering why you started and, 61–63 setting goals based on, 55–56 Mencken, H.

Shipping Greatness
by Chris Vander Mey
Published 23 Aug 2012

We all know that Amazon, Google, and others have been wrong many times. So you’re probably right, but the best way to prove you are is to give customers a product and see what they say. Serial software entrepreneur Eric Ries seems to agree with this approach, and makes a compelling case for building what he calls the minimum viable product in his book The Lean Startup (Crown Business). Ries defines the minimum viable product as the smallest fraction of your product that a sufficient number of customers will use in order to validate an assumption. You may only need a handful of customers to know you’re on the right track, and you may only need to validate one assumption at a time.

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But you do want to measure user engagement so you can answer questions like “Are users spending time on the site?” and “Are they posting?” A relevant collection of metrics for these behaviors might be posts in seven days per seven-day-active-user and minutes spent on-site per seven-day active user. Eric Ries isn’t a big fan of these growth metrics in his book The Lean Startup (Crown Business). He calls them vanity metrics because you can puff up your chest, point to a chart that goes up and to the right, and say, “Look, we’re awesome! We’re growing!” even as your product is failing 90% of the incoming new users. It’s a fair point. This is why you need to look at metrics like conversion and engagement, among others.

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Meeting notes and schedules for: your team’s weekly meeting, UI review, product review, engineering review, bug triage, legal reviews, weekly business development, and weekly customer support check-ins. Appendix C. References and Further Reading Product Definition Kawasaki, Guy. The Art of the Start: The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything. New York: Portfolio Hardcover, 2004. Ries, Eric. The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses. New York: Crown Business, 2011. Managing Management Bossidy, Larry, and Ram Charan. Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done. New York: Crown Business, 2002. Drucker, Peter F. The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done, Revised Edition.

Ctrl Alt Delete: Reboot Your Business. Reboot Your Life. Your Future Depends on It.
by Mitch Joel
Published 20 May 2013

We live in a new era of entrepreneurship, and business ideas can be tested and marketed for success like never before. Eric Ries has been preaching the value of what he has called The Lean Startup in his very popular blog and bestselling business book of the same name (published two years ago), and it has become all the rage. Much like Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point became a catchphrase that every business executive used in 2002, over the past two years every person looking to start a business has been talking about it being a “lean startup.” The most embraced concept in Ries’s book was the notion of the “pivot”: that the most successful startups (the ones that eventually turned a two-person operation into a multimillion-or multibillion-dollar business) were the ones that were able to identify quickly that what they were doing did not have much commercial viability and were able to “pivot” the business model—through iteration—into something people actually wanted to use.

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He is known to get way down into the weeds of the work. For his television show he handles everything from editing down to the music selection. On December 10, 2011, C.K. released his fourth full-length comedy special, Live at the Beacon Theater, but unlike his previous specials, he decided to run this project like an ultra-lean startup and distributed it digitally through his own website. Leveraging the power of his direct relationship with his fans, C.K. circumvented physical and broadcast media, publishers, producers, and distribution companies. He took a startup approach (including the participation in a Reddit AMA—Ask Me Anything—question-and-answer session online).

Startup CEO: A Field Guide to Scaling Up Your Business, + Website
by Matt Blumberg
Published 13 Aug 2013

Luckily, there’s a middle ground: a process of formalizing and communicating hypotheses that doesn’t take months of work and lead to hundreds of spreadsheets—and one that allows considerable flexibility in execution. The “Lean” Classics “Lean startups” focus on finding product-to-market fit through a process of rapid product development and quick iterations based on customer feedback. It’s the opposite of porting MBA techniques to the startup world—and much more effective. Here is our short list of smart, interesting books about starting a business: The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses by Eric Ries The Four Steps to the Epiphany: Successful Strategies for Products that Win by Steven Gary Blank Running Lean: Iterate from Plan A to a Plan that Works by Ash Maurya The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development: A Cheat Sheet to The Four Steps to the Epiphany by Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits How to Start a Business by Jason Nazar and Rochelle Bailis (eBook) A LEAN BUSINESS PLAN TEMPLATE The goal of a lean business planning process should be to produce three outputs.

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They are much riskier and more complex than changing your position in the marketplace or tweaking your internal model, but they’re unavoidable (especially if you’re listening to the marketplace rather than trying to force yourself on it). A pivot isn’t a leap; it’s a change of direction about a fixed point—your core capabilities. In late 2009, I spoke at the New York City Lean Startup Meetup. My topic was “The Pivot,” but the best summary of my position actually came from a member of the audience, who boiled it down to three words: “Pivot, don’t Jump!” When you discover that your prior conception of “product-market fit” is off, the temptation is to leap in a completely different direction.

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Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors (Simon & Schuster, 2008). Porter, Michael. Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance (Simon & Schuster, 2008). Ries, Al, and Jack Trout, Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind (McGraw-Hill Education, 2003). Ries, Eric. The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses (Random House, 2011). Smart, Brad. Topgrading: The Proven Hiring and Promoting Method that Turbocharges Company Performance (Penguin, 2012). Stalk, George, and Rob Lachenauer. Hardball: Are You Playing to Play or Playing to Win?

Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future
by Peter Thiel and Blake Masters
Published 15 Sep 2014

Journalists analogize literal survival in competitive ecosystems to corporate survival in competitive markets. Hence all the headlines like “Digital Darwinism,” “Dot-com Darwinism,” and “Survival of the Clickiest.” Even in engineering-driven Silicon Valley, the buzzwords of the moment call for building a “lean startup” that can “adapt” and “evolve” to an ever-changing environment. Would-be entrepreneurs are told that nothing can be known in advance: we’re supposed to listen to what customers say they want, make nothing more than a “minimum viable product,” and iterate our way to success. But leanness is a methodology, not a goal.

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Jobs, Steve, 5.1, 5.2, 6.1, 6.2, 14.1 Jones, Jim Joplin, Janis justice Justice Department, U.S. Kaczynski, Ted Karim, Jawed Karp, Alex, 11.1, 12.1 Kasparov, Garry Katrina, Hurricane Kennedy, Anthony Kesey, Ken Kessler, Andy Kurzweil, Ray last mover, 11.1, 13.1 last mover advantage lean startup, 2.1, 6.1, 6.2 Levchin, Max, 4.1, 10.1, 12.1, 14.1 Levie, Aaron lifespan life tables LinkedIn, 5.1, 10.1, 12.1 Loiseau, Bernard Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM) Lord of the Rings (Tolkien) luck, 6.1, 6.2, 6.3, 6.4 Lucretius Lyft MacBook machine learning Madison, James Madrigal, Alexis Manhattan Project Manson, Charles manufacturing marginal cost marketing Marx, Karl, 4.1, 6.1, 6.2, 6.3 Masters, Blake, prf.1, 11.1 Mayer, Marissa Medicare Mercedes-Benz MiaSolé, 13.1, 13.2 Michelin Microsoft, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 4.1, 5.1, 14.1 mobile computing mobile credit card readers Mogadishu monopoly, monopolies, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 5.1, 7.1, 8.1 building of characteristics of in cleantech creative dynamism of new lies of profits of progress and sales and of Tesla Morrison, Jim Mosaic browser music recording industry Musk, Elon, 4.1, 6.1, 11.1, 13.1, 13.2, 13.3 Napster, 5.1, 14.1 NASA, 6.1, 11.1 NASDAQ, 2.1, 13.1 National Security Agency (NSA) natural gas natural secrets Navigator browser Netflix Netscape NetSecure network effects, 5.1, 5.2 New Economy, 2.1, 2.2 New York Times, 13.1, 14.1 New York Times Nietzsche, Friedrich Nokia nonprofits, 13.1, 13.2 Nosek, Luke, 9.1, 14.1 Nozick, Robert nutrition Oedipus, 14.1, 14.2 OfficeJet OmniBook online pet store market Oracle Outliers (Gladwell) ownership Packard, Dave Page, Larry Palantir, prf.1, 7.1, 10.1, 11.1, 12.1 PalmPilots, 2.1, 5.1, 11.1 Pan, Yu Panama Canal Pareto, Vilfredo Pareto principle Parker, Sean, 5.1, 14.1 Part-time employees patents path dependence PayPal, prf.1, 2.1, 3.1, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, 5.1, 5.2, 5.3, 8.1, 9.1, 9.2, 10.1, 10.2, 10.3, 10.4, 11.1, 11.2, 12.1, 12.2, 14.1 founders of, 14.1 future cash flows of investors in “PayPal Mafia” PCs Pearce, Dave penicillin perfect competition, 3.1, 3.2 equilibrium of Perkins, Tom perk war Perot, Ross, 2.1, 12.1, 12.2 pessimism Petopia.com Pets.com, 4.1, 4.2 PetStore.com pharmaceutical companies philanthropy philosophy, indefinite physics planning, 2.1, 6.1, 6.2 progress without Plato politics, 6.1, 11.1 indefinite polling pollsters pollution portfolio, diversified possession power law, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3 of distribution of venture capital Power Sellers (eBay) Presley, Elvis Priceline.com Prince Procter & Gamble profits, 2.1, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3 progress, 6.1, 6.2 future of without planning proprietary technology, 5.1, 5.2, 13.1 public opinion public relations Pythagoras Q-Cells Rand, Ayn Rawls, John, 6.1, 6.2 Reber, John recession, of mid-1990 recruiting, 10.1, 12.1 recurrent collapse, bm1.1, bm1.2 renewable energy industrial index research and development resources, 12.1, bm1.1 restaurants, 3.1, 3.2, 5.1 risk risk aversion Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare) Romulus and Remus Roosevelt, Theodore Royal Society Russia Sacks, David sales, 2.1, 11.1, 13.1 complex as hidden to non-customers personal Sandberg, Sheryl San Francisco Bay Area savings scale, economies of Scalia, Antonin scaling up scapegoats Schmidt, Eric search engines, prf.1, 3.1, 5.1 secrets, 8.1, 13.1 about people case for finding of looking for using self-driving cars service businesses service economy Shakespeare, William, 4.1, 7.1 Shark Tank Sharma, Suvi Shatner, William Siebel, Tom Siebel Systems Silicon Valley, 1.1, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 5.1, 5.2, 6.1, 7.1, 10.1, 11.1 Silver, Nate Simmons, Russel, 10.1, 14.1 singularity smartphones, 1.1, 12.1 social entrepreneurship Social Network, The social networks, prf.1, 5.1 Social Security software engineers software startups, 5.1, 6.1 solar energy, 13.1, 13.2, 13.3, 13.4 Solaria Solyndra, 13.1, 13.2, 13.3, 13.4, 13.5 South Korea space shuttle SpaceX, prf.1, 10.1, 11.1 Spears, Britney SpectraWatt, 13.1, 13.2 Spencer, Herbert, 6.1, 6.2 Square, 4.1, 6.1 Stanford Sleep Clinic startups, prf.1, 1.1, 5.1, 6.1, 6.2, 7.1 assigning responsibilities in cash flow at as cults disruption by during dot-com mania economies of scale and foundations of founder’s paradox in lessons of dot-com mania for power law in public relations in sales and staff of target market for uniform of venture capital and steam engine Stoppelman, Jeremy string theory strong AI substitution, complementarity vs.

The Internet Is Not the Answer
by Andrew Keen
Published 5 Jan 2015

And to help us overcome the fear, to make it feel good to fail, FailCon invited some of Big Tech’s greatest innovators to outfail each other with tales of their losses. At FailCon, the F-word was ubiquitous among illustrious Silicon Valley speakers like Airbnb cofounder Joe Gebbia, the billionaire venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, and Eric Ries, the author of a bestselling handbook for Internet success called The Lean Startup. Indeed, the more uncannily prescient the investor, the more moneyed the startup entrepreneur, the bigger the influencer, the more boastfully they broadcasted their litany of failures. At FailCon, we heard about failure as the most valuable kind of education, failure as a necessity of innovation, failure as a version of enlightenment, and, most ironically, given the event’s self-congratulatory tenor, failure as a lesson in humility.

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It was a question so taken for granted at evangelical events like FailCon that, amid this technology crowd, I might as well have been speaking Sanskrit or Swahili. In Silicon Valley, everyone knows the answer. Their answer is an unregulated, hyperefficient platform like Airbnb for buyers and sellers. Their answer is the distributed system of capitalism being built, unregulated cab by cab, by Travis Kalanick. Their answer is a “lean startup” like WhatsApp that employs fifty-five people and sells for $19 billion. Their answer is data factories that turn us all into human billboards. Their answer is the Internet. “It’s obviously been a success for all of us,” I explained, sweeping my hand around the room packed with fabulously wealthy failures.

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,” Letters to the Editor, Wall Street Journal, January 24, 2014. 34 Nick Wingfield, “Seattle Gets Its Own Tech Bus Protest,” New York Times, February 10, 2014. 35 Packer, “Change the World.” 36 Ibid. 37 Guynn, “San Francisco Split by Silicon Valley’s Wealth.” 38 Stephanie Gleason and Rachel Feintzeig, “Startups Are Quick to Fire,” New York Times, December 12, 2013. 39 See, for example, Eric Ries, The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses (New York: Crown, 2011). 40 Quentin Hardy, “Technology Workers Are Young (Really Young),” New York Times, July 5, 2013. 41 Vivek Wadhwa, “A Code Name for Sexism and Racism,” Wall Street Journal, October 7, 2013. 42 Jon Terbush, “The Tech Industry’s Sexism Problem Is Only Getting Worse,” The Week, September 12, 2013. 43 Jessica Guynn, “Sexism a Problem in Silicon Valley, Critics Say,” Los Angeles Times, October 24, 2013. 44 Terbush, “The Tech Industry’s Sexism Problem Is Only Getting Worse.” 45 Elissa Shevinsky, “That’s It—I’m Finished Defending Sexism in Tech,” Business Insider, September 9, 2013. 46 Max Taves, “Bias Claims Surge Against Tech Industry,” Recorder, August 16, 2013. 47 Colleen Taylor, “Key Details of the Kleiner Perkins Gender Discrimination Lawsuit,” TechCrunch, May 22, 2012. 48 Alan Berube, “All Cities Are Not Created Unequal,” Brookings Institution, February 20, 2014. 49 Timothy Egan, “Dystopia by the Bay,” New York Times, December 5, 2013. 50 Marissa Lagos, “San Francisco Evictions Surge, Reports Find,” San Francisco Chronicle, November 5, 2013. 51 Carolyn Said, “Airbnb Profits Prompted S.F.

How to Build a Billion Dollar App: Discover the Secrets of the Most Successful Entrepreneurs of Our Time
by George Berkowski
Published 3 Sep 2014

More recently, they turned down acquisition offers of $3 billion and $4 billion from Facebook and Google respectively. On average, a user uses the Snapchat app 34 times a month. That means by the end of 2013, Snapchat’s 350 million daily snap number matched the number of photos users uploaded to Facebook.28 In the true spirit of a lean startup, at the end of 2013 the team was still only around 40 people. Snapchat is still a story in progress. But the lessons are clear: it focused on a universal need, messaging, mixed it up with a true innovation, anonymity, and then focused on a great experience and performance. Designed to be touched Angry Birds is one of the most popular games – and brands – in history.

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What went wrong? Most people often don’t spend anywhere near enough time talking to their prospective customers. Understanding your target users is critical – especially understanding their problems and how your app is going to solve those problems. I recommend a great book by Eric Ries called The Lean Startup. ‘Lean’ is a great adjective. It is about building your app wisely, frugally, without wasting time, without excessive costs, and maintaining a vigour and energy. In the book Ries summarises an approach to eliminate uncertainty, and inject process and rigour around developing and testing your product to make sure it resonates with your target users.

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Chapter 21 Tuning and Humming At this point in your journey, revenue becomes critical. It’s not just about getting dollars in the door, though: to make it to the top of the app heap you need to have revenues that scale. Steve Blank, a serial Silicon Valley entrepreneur and the father of the lean-startup movement (we mentioned this in Chapter 7: ‘Getting Lean and Mean’), explains it brilliantly in The Startup Owner’s Manual: ‘Simply put, does adding $1 in sales and marketing resource generate $2+ of revenue?’ Your goal is to create a very efficient revenue engine – and keep it evolving. You want to get more out of it than you’re putting in.

Don't Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability
by Steve Krug
Published 1 Jan 2000

Testing reminds you that not everyone thinks the way you do, knows what you know, and uses the Web the way you do. I used to say that the best way to think about testing is that it’s like travel: a broadening experience. It reminds you how different—and the same—people are and gives you a fresh perspective on things.1 1 As the Lean Startup folks would say, it gets you out of the building. But I finally realized that testing is really more like having friends visiting from out of town. Inevitably, as you make the rounds of the local tourist sites with them, you see things about your hometown that you usually don’t notice because you’re so used to them.

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Orrin, Web site, viii Holmes, Sherlock, 7 Home page cluttered, 39 designing, 84 happy talk on, 50 link to, 70 hover, 152 I–K instructions, eliminating, 51–52 Ive, Jonathan, x, 184 Jarrett, Caroline, 40, 46, 194 Jobs, Steve, x, 184 “kayak” problems, 139 Klein, Gary, 24–25 Kleiner, Art, 107 Krug’s laws of usability, 10–11, 43, 49 L Larson, Gary, 23 Lean startup, 4, 114 Lincoln, Abraham, 145 link-dominant users, 59 links, visited vs. unvisited, 190 logo. See Site ID M memorability, 159 mensch, 164 mindless choices, 42–47 mirroring, 161 mission statement, 95 mobile apps, 155 usability testing, 160 Mobile First, 147–49 muddling through, 25–27 N names, importance of, 14 navigation conventions, 64 designing, 58 lower-level, 72 persistent, 66 revealing content, 63 needless words, omitting, 48–52 new feature requests, 139 Nielsen, Jakob, xi, 54, 58–59, 96, 115, 121 noise.

Capital Allocators: How the World’s Elite Money Managers Lead and Invest
by Ted Seides
Published 23 Mar 2021

He suggests developing clear plans, priorities, and timelines with milestones. Companies from start-ups to large corporations use the lingo KPIs, or key performance indicators, to define the milestones to achieve objectives. Scott Kupor similarly defines deliverables and asks his team what they think they will need to meet them. In his book Lean Start-Up,32 Eric Ries discusses a cycle of building, measuring, and getting feedback to iterate on product development. Patrick O’Shaughnessy uses his vision of learn, build, share, repeat to get at the same idea. When something goes wrong, good managers perceive problems as learning opportunities.

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There are libraries full of management books. I picked this one because it had the most influence on me. * * * 30. Jason H, Karp on Twitter (@humankarp). 31. Charley Ellis, Capital: The Story of Long-Term Excellence, Managing People, pp. 218–219. 32. Eric Ries, The Lean Start-Up, How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses, Currency New York, 2011. Part 2: Investment Frameworks Alongside the tools in the toolkit, guests on the show talk in detail about their investing. Part 2 discusses the frameworks modern CIOs employ in managing the money entrusted to them.

Fabricated: The New World of 3D Printing
by Hod Lipson and Melba Kurman
Published 20 Nov 2012

Benchmarking competitors might work, but it’s still uncertain. For complex products that offer lots of options and compete in constantly shifting markets, traditional modes of market research are outdated by the time the analysis is finished. Startup companies, in particular, can’t afford traditional market research tools. In his book The Lean Startup, Eric Ries suggests that companies should explore and experiment with multiple new ideas at the same time and adjust their strategies on the fly.3 Ries argues that startups should conduct a continuous steady stream of small, lean experiments. 3D printing will help companies quickly market test new products and adapt to market feedback.

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As always seems to be the case, with digital products, this sort of dynamic experimentation is easier and cheaper. Data on user preferences and purchases is more readily available. For physical products, an iterative, real-time approach to testing product variables is harder to implement and user data more difficult to gather. How could Lean Startup principles be applied to a physical product? Imagine your startup sold cell phone covers. You wanted to compare one cell phone cover that had a star shaped pattern embossed into the back, and another, plainer version that didn’t. You could display both for sale and see which one was purchased more but you’d actually have to manufacture both and pay for the cost of producing two different injection molds.

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Chapter 3 1 Quote from a press conference covered by VentureBeat in May 2012. http://venturebeat.com/2012/05/10/3d-systems-ceo-we-want-3d-printing-to-be-as-big-as-the-ipad/ 2 Quote from Terry’s blog, July 2012. http://wohlersassociates.com/blog/2012/07/why-most-adults-will-never-use-a-3d-printer/ Chapter 4 1 Chris Anderson, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More (New York, NY: Hyperion Press, 2008). 2 Joseph Pine and James Gilmore, The Experience Economy (Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 1999). 3 Eric Reis, The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses. (New York, NY: Crown Publishing Group, 2011). 4 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microcredit Chapter 5 1 Harris L. Marcus, Joel W. Barlow, Joseph J. Beaman, and David L. Bourell, “From computer to component in 15 minutes: The integrated manufacture of three-dimensional objects.”

Frugal Innovation: How to Do Better With Less
by Jaideep Prabhu Navi Radjou
Published 15 Feb 2015

Use just-in-time design Rather than over-engineering products with just-in-case features, companies should adopt just-in-time design. This starts with a good-enough product and incrementally adds new features based on customer feedback in a just-in-time fashion. Approaches such as agile development methodology and lean start-up, which teach companies how to fail fast, fail early and fail cheaply, can enable such just-in-time design in large firms with big R&D teams.11 Beware supply chain constraints Delays and cost escalation in innovation projects often occur because R&D teams design products without considering supply chain capabilities.

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As Beth Comstock, chief marketing officer at GE, a multinational conglomerate, puts it:16 We’re constantly tinkering with our business models to get leaner and more agile and to get closer to our customers – to act small even though we’re big. Comstock believes that GE has learned four main lessons from start-ups: Keep things simple. Although GE may seem complicated from the outside, its laser-like focus on its core activity – technology – gives the company a unified sense of purpose. Work fast. GE has drawn on the lean start-up ethos to develop FastWorks, a set of tools and principles to help the firm do things more quickly and efficiently (see Chapter 7). Find solutions through multiple partnerships and ask the wider community when the firm lacks relevant expertise. Don’t be afraid of uncertainty. Many GE start-ups did not turn out as originally planned, but were useful nonetheless.

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Tarcher/Putnam, 2000. 8Botsman, R. and Rogers, R., What’s Mine Is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption, HarperBusiness, 2010. 9Mulliez, V., CEO, Groupe Auchan, interview with Navi Radjou, October 8th 2013. 10McQuivey, J., Digital Disruption: Unleashing the next Wave of Innovation, Forrester Research, 2013. 2Principle one: engage and iterate 1“The History of Quicken”, www.intuit.com. 2Peters, T., Thriving on Chaos: Handbook for a Management Revolution, HarperBusiness, 1987. 3Strategy& (formerly Booz & Company), The 2014 Global Innovation 1000: Proven paths to innovation success (Media report), October 28th 2014. 4Hewitt J., Campbell J. and Cacciotti, J., Beyond the Shadow of a Drought, Oliver Wyman, 2011. 5Grogan, K., “Productivity of pharma R&D down 70% – study”, PharmaTimes, December 2nd 2011. 6Booz & Company, op. cit. 7Prabhu, A., innovation and insights director, Lion Dairy & Drinks, interview with Jaideep Prabhu, February 23rd 2014. 8Booz & Company, op. cit. 9The case study on Fujitsu’s work with farmers at Sawa Orchards in Wakayama, Japan, is based on interviews conducted by the authors with several senior executives at Fujitsu in the US and Japan. 10Booz & Company, op. cit. 11Ries, E., The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses, Crown Business, 2011. 12Mayhew, S., head of R&D strategy development, GSK, interview with Jaideep Prabhu, February 17th 2014. 13Cornillon, P., senior vice-president R&D, Arla Foods, interview with Jaideep Prabhu, February 28th 2014. 14Radjou, N., Transforming R&D Culture, Forrester Research, March 20th 2006. 15Scott, M., “The Payments Challenge for Mobile Carriers”, New York Times, February 26th 2014. 16Comstock, B., “We’ve learned these four lessons from startups, and we’re using them to transform GE”, LinkedIn, December 10th 2013. 17Most of the material used in this case study comes from Radjou, N. and Prabhu, J., “Beating Competitors with High-Speed Innovation”, Strategy+Business, December 18th 2013 (www.strategy-business.com). 3Principle two: flex your assets 1Anand, N. and Barsoux, J-L., Quest: Leading Global Transformations, IMD International, 2014. 2Trout, B.L., director of the Novartis-MIT Center for Continuous Manufacturing, interview with Navi Radjou, May 9th 2014. 3“RAF jets fly with 3D printed parts”, BBC News, January 5th 2014. 4“Peter Weijmarshausen: 3D Printing”, etalks, April 2nd 2013. 5This quote from Gérard Mestrallet, CEO of GDF-Suez, is slightly adapted from its original version that appeared in his interview with a French magazine, L’Expansion, in December 2013. 6Dugan, J., Caterpillar to Expand Manufacturing and Increase Employment in the United States with New Hydraulic Excavator Facility in Victoria, Texas, Caterpillar press release, August 12th 2010. 7Wong, H., Potter, A. and Naim, M., “Evaluation of postponement in the soluble coffee supply chain: A case study”, International Journal of Production Economics, Vol. 131, Issue 1, May 2011, pp. 355–64. 8O’Marah, K., chief content officer, SCM World, and senior research fellow at Stanford Global Supply Chain Management Forum, interview with Navi Radjou, March 11th 2014. 9Beasty, C., “The Chain Gang”, Destination CRM, October 2007. 10Morieux, Y., “As work gets more complex, 6 rules to simplify”, TED Talk, October 2013. 11Lopez, M., CEO, Lopez Research, interview with Navi Radjou, March 28th 2014. 12O’Connell, A., “Lego CEO Jørgen Vig Knudstorp on leading through survival and growth”, Harvard Business Review, January 2009. 13“The Return to Apple”, All About Steve Jobs: http://allaboutstevejobs.com/bio/longbio/longbio_08.php. 14O’Connell, op. cit. 15Francis, S., CEO, Flock Associates, and former head of Aegis Europe, interview with Jaideep Prabhu, January 27th 2014. 16This case study is adapted from an original version that appeared in French in L’Innovation Jugaad, published by Diateino in 2013.

Start Small, Stay Small: A Developer's Guide to Launching a Startup
by Rob Walling
Published 15 Jan 2010

The Approach We’re going to look at an approach to testing your market called the Mini Sales Site. I developed this approach a few years ago after reading the 4-Hour Workweek, realizing that the author’s testing approach could be re-purposed from information and physical product testing to software products. Since then, a similar approach has been defined by the Lean Startup Methodology. I take it as a sign that we’re both on the right track. The Mini Sales Site The idea behind this approach is that if you ask visitors whether or not they would buy your product, you will wind up with inaccurate data. The only way you know if someone would try or buy your product is if they think they are really trying or buying it when they visit your sales site.

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A Smart Bear (blog.asmartbear.com) – Jason Cohen grew and sold his software company. Now he gives back to the startup community by sharing his knowledge here. Steve Blank (steveblank.com) – Steve Blank is a Silicon Valley veteran, but many of his insights apply to self-funded startups. Lessons Learned (www.startuplessonslearned.com) – Eric Ries’ Lean Startup Methodology closely parallels the Micropreneur Methodology I’ve laid out in this book, and his knowledge of the startup process is unparalleled. Single Founder (www.singlefounder.com) – Mike Taber shares his insight and wisdom from 10 years in the entrepreneurial trenches. Paul Graham (www.paulgraham.com/articles.html) – Though venture-focused, Graham’s insights into the startup process are unique and powerful.

Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World
by Adam Grant
Published 2 Feb 2016

Lucas and Loran F. Nordgren, “People Underestimate the Value of Persistence for Creative Performance,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 109 (2015): 232–43. Daily Show cocreator Lizz Winstead: Personal interview with Lizz Winstead, February 8, 2015. minimum viable product: Eric Ries, The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses (New York: Crown, 2011). false negatives are common: Charalampos Mainemelis, “Stealing Fire: Creative Deviance in the Evolution of New Ideas,” Academy of Management Review 35 (2010): 558–78; Aren Wilborn, “5 Hilarious Reasons Publishers Rejected Classic Best-Sellers,” Cracked, February 13, 2013, www.cracked.com/article_20285_5-hilarious-reasons-publishers-rejected-classic-best-sellers.html; Berg, “Balancing on the Creative High-Wire.”

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M., 110 Founders Fund, 123 Fragale, Alison, 65 Franklin, Benjamin, 93, 208 Franklin, Rosalind, 110 Frazier, Kenneth, 233–34 frenemies, 129, 131 Freud, Sigmund, 117, 156, 239 friends, 128–29 Friestad, Marian, 70 Frost, Robert, 109, 111–12 Fuller, Sally Riggs, 179 Gaffigan, Jim, 159, 162 gains, emphasizing losses versus, 232–34 Galenson, David, 109–11 Galileo Galilei, 48, 152 Gandhi, Mahatma, 14, 172, 227 Garrison, William Lloyd, 126n Garrow, David, 102 Gates, Bill, 14, 20 gender: forecasting and, 37n roles and, 138, 141 speaking up and, 84–88 Gerrity, Tom, 203 Gersick, Connie, 101n Gettysburg Address, 98 Gilboa, Dave, 7–8, 15, 16, 20–22, 58–59 Gino, Francesca, 100 Gladwell, Malcolm, 23, 105–6 Glass, Ira, 36–37 glasses, 1–2, 7–8 Warby Parker, 1–3, 7–8, 14–17, 20–22, 57–60, 107 Godart, Frédéric, 48 Godfather, The: Part II, 128 Golder, Peter, 103–4 Goldman Sachs, 204 Goldsmith, Marshall, 182–83 Goncalo, Jack, 84n Google, 2, 17–18, 24–25, 29, 55, 81, 83, 188, 198 canaries at, 198–99 Google+, 33 Gore, Al, 6 Goshen, Brian, 230n go system, 216–18, 221, 223, 226, 227, 229, 230n, 231, 233, 236, 240 GQ, 2 Great Depression, 235 Greece, 118 Greenert, Jonathan, 125 Griscom, Rufus, 68–70, 72–74, 77, 247 Grissom, Marquis, 149 Gross, Bill, 103 group projects, 253–54 groupthink, 176–79, 185–86, 189, 191, 197, 202, 204, 209, 254 Grusec, Joan, 168 Guernica (Picasso), 35 guilt, 165, 253 Haddock, Geoffrey, 74n halftimes, 101n Hamlet (Shakespeare), 135, 137–38, 247 handbags, 51 Handey, Jack, 190 Handler, Chelsea, 159 handspring, 90 Hannan, Michael, 181n Hansen, Drew, 101–3 Harry Potter series (Rowling), 40–41, 173–74 Hawkins, Jeff, 90 Heath, Chip, 76, 120 Heath, Dan, 76 Henderson, Rickey, 147, 149 Herrmann, Pol, 100–101 Hewlett-Packard, 13, 17 high school seniors, 33 Hirschman, Albert, 79, 89 Hitchcock, Alfred, 109 Hobson, Mellody, 14 Hochschild, Arlie, 237 Hoffman, Martin, 163, 165n Hofmann, David, 100, 166, 196–98, 221 Hollander, Edwin, 67 Hollingshead, Andrea, 199n–200n Holocaust, 163, 165, 168, 170, 253 Homans, George, 83 homosexuality, 159n honest broker, 193n Hope, Bob, 45 horizontal hostility, 117–18 hospitals, 185n, 205–6 hand washing in, 166 Housman, Michael, 4–5 Howe, Julia Ward, 133 humor, 227–30 Huxley, Aldous, 19 idea generation, 31, 34, 39, 44, 84n, 245–46 quantity and, 35–38 starting point in, 136–37 Idealab, 103 idea meritocracy, 207 idea selection, 31, 44, 56 IDEO, 190n idiosyncrasy credits, 67, 88 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Angelou), 36 improvisation, 100 inaugural addresses, 214n Index Group, 203 information processing, 73–74, 78 in-line skates, 136, 137 innovation tournament, 249 Instacart, 105 intelligence community, 62–64, 68, 70, 78–79, 107 Intellipedia, 64, 68, 79n Internet, 63, 64, 67 Internet browsers, 3–6 Internet Explorer, 4–6 intuitions, 51, 53–55 Israel-Palestine conflict, 142, 143n Jackson, Mahalia, 100, 102 Janis, Irving, 176–78, 191 Jensen, Greg, 201–3, 205, 207–8 Jefferson, Thomas, 13 Jews, 118 during Holocaust, 163, 165, 168, 170, 253 Jigsaw Classroom, 253–54 job rotation, 246 Jobs, Steve, 12–14, 17, 26, 45, 64, 87–90, 189, 208 Dubinsky and, 87–88, 90 Land and, 175, 176 Segway and, 29, 39, 50–55, 106n Johnson, Lyndon, 177 Jones, Clarence, 98–100 Jost, John, 6 Jung, Wooseok, 120–21, 122n Kahneman, Daniel, 53, 55, 233 Kamen, Dean, 32, 38, 39, 50, 52–56, 58, 60–61, 106 Katzenberg, Jeffrey, 134, 135 Kelman, Herbert, 142, 143 Kemper, Steve, 50, 106n Kennedy, John F., 177, 178, 199n Kennedy, Robert F., 191, 193n Kerouac, Jack, 2, 59 Kerr, Andrea Moore, 131, 133, 145 Khosla, Vinod, 108 “Kill the company” exercise, 234, 250 King, Brayden, 120–21, 122n King, Coretta Scott, 12, 92 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 11–14, 113, 172, 212, 241–42 “I Have a Dream” speech of, 12, 92–93, 98–103, 113, 235 workshops of, 238–39, 241 King, Stephen, 18 King Lear (Shakespeare), 135 Klein, Gary, 53 Klosterman, Chuck, 132n Knight, Phil, 17 Koch, Helen, 157n Koch, Robert, 107 Kodak, 181 Kohlmann, Ben, 247 Komisar, Randy, 52–54, 56, 60–61, 106n Koo, Minjung, 235 Kotter, John, 76, 232 Kozbelt, Aaron, 34 Kozmo, 105 Kramer, Roderick, 178 Kunda, Ziva, 170 Kurkoski, Jennifer, 24 Kutcher, Ashron, 220–21 Land, Edwin, 19, 175–76, 181–82, 183–87, 203, 204 Last Supper, The (da Vinci), 97, 112 Lawson, James, 238 leaders, 222 Lean In (Sandberg), 85 LeanIn.Org, xi Lean Startup, The (Ries), 39n Lee, Aileen, 52, 54, 56 LeFlore, Ron, 149 Legend, John, 18 Lego building experiment, 101n Leno, Jay, 45 Leonardo da Vinci, 96–97, 112 LePine, Jeff, 81 life cycles of creativity, 108–13 Lincoln, Abraham, 23–24, 98 Emancipation Proclamation of, 24, 235 line length experiment, 224–25 Linge, Mary Kay, 160 Lion King, The, 134–35, 137–38, 247 listing positive features, 73–74 Little, Brian, 243 Littlefield, Warren, 40, 41, 44 Lockwood, Penelope, 170 Lofton, Kenny, 149 logic of appropriateness, 154, 166–67, 170 logic of consequence, 154, 165–66, 170, 253 Lord of the Rings, The (Tolkien), 172 losses, emphasizing gains versus, 232–34 Lowell, Robert, 112 Lubart, Todd, 11 Lublin, Nancy, 250 Lucy Stone League, 114 Ludwin, Rick, 44–46, 49–50, 57 Luther, Martin, 93 Luxottica, 1, 8 Ma, Jack, 172–73 MacKinnon, Donald, 100, 164 Made to Stick (Heath and Heath), 76 Magnavox Odyssey, 104 Maldives, 238 managers and bosses, 80–82 Mandela, Nelson, 172, 210 March, James, 154 March on Washington, 12, 92–93, 98–103 Margolis, Joshua, 241 Maslow, Abraham, 111 May, Brian, 18 Mayer, Marissa, 123 McAdams, Dan, 219 McCammon, Holly, 138, 141 McCrae, Robert, 48n McCune, William, 184 McDonald, Michael, 184 Mead, Margaret, 225 medicine, 207 Medina, Carmen, 62–68, 70–71, 78–82, 84–87, 89–91, 107, 247 Meena, 172 memory for tasks, 99 mentors, 171, 172 Merck, 233–34 mere exposure effect, 77–78, 137 method acting, 237–38 Meyerson, Debra, 124, 236–37 Michelangelo, 12, 13 microbiology laboratories, 184n–85n Microsoft, 20, 222 middle-status conformity effect, 82–84 Mill, Harriet Taylor, 115 Mill, John Stuart, 115 Millay, Edna St.

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* The lesson here isn’t to ask customers what they want. As the famous line often attributed to Henry Ford goes: “If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.” Instead, creators ought to build a car and see if customers will drive it. That means identifying a potential need, designing what The Lean Startup author Eric Ries calls a minimum viable product, testing different versions, and gathering feedback. * One category of circus acts was universally disliked by managers, test audiences, and creators: clowns. It’s not a coincidence that one Seinfeld episode revolves around clowns striking fear into the hearts of adults as well as children

Masters of Scale: Surprising Truths From the World's Most Successful Entrepreneurs
by Reid Hoffman , June Cohen and Deron Triff
Published 14 Oct 2021

In a way, your business itself could be thought of as an experiment. And for the experiment to succeed, you have to be willing to throw out—or at least challenge—what you originally believed to be true. Learning to experiment (and experimenting to learn) Eric Ries is the founder of the Long-Term Stock Exchange and author of the iconic book The Lean Startup. But at twenty-five, Eric was co-founder of an unknown, unproven startup, IMVU, which built 3D avatars for social networking platforms. IMVU had a terrific business plan from the outset—Eric knows, because he wrote it. “It was fifty pages of just the most eloquent prose,” Eric says, “with data sourced from the U.S. census, and all of this analysis.

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In the midst of his research, Eric left IMVU and became an advisor to other startups. He also began writing blog posts, anonymously. And eventually, these posts became the basis for his book. It arrived at exactly the right time. In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, entrepreneurs needed to achieve liftoff without huge amounts of capital or years of development time. The Lean Startup has since sold more than a million copies. But more importantly, it became a handbook for a new way of doing business. I often say, “If you aren’t embarrassed by your first product release, you’ve released it too late.” Why? Because you need to test a real product with real customers as soon as possible—basically the moment you have a bare-bones version.

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As they refined their deck, they also learned which investors were most likely to hear them out, and what types of advisors would give investors more confidence. Most importantly, they learned more about who they were as a company. In some pitches, “there was quite a disconnect between our mission- and goals-driven style of thinking and a more iterative Lean Startup approach.” These investors, she realized, “were not going to ever get on board with the way we were thinking, because we’ve always been and continue to be very much long-term thinkers.” Melanie and her partners did not start their entrepreneurial journey knowing everything they needed to know.

Kanban in Action
by Marcus Hammarberg and Joakim Sunden
Published 17 Mar 2014

It’s a must-have for any change agent. The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses (Eric Ries, Crown Business, 2011, http://theleanstartup.com/book, http://amzn.com/0307887898)—This book talks about applying Lean concepts to ideas: more specifically, business ideas; and even more specifically, startup ideas. These ideas range from using the scientific method for exploration to A/B testing to validate your hypothesis. Soon after reading it, you’ll start to realize what many others have seen: Lean Startup can be applied to your business regardless of whether you’re a startup.

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For example, pick up some practices from XP, like pair programming or test-driven development, to get a handle on your code quality. Or you might start looking into impact mapping and specification by example to get a grip on the early stages of your feature’s life and a make sure you’re building the right thing. In recent years, continuous delivery and the ideas behind Lean startup have become popular. These methods focus on shortening the feedback loops in your process so you can get feedback on your new features more quickly. The principles of kanban can be of great use here to help you visualize and track the quick flow of your features. In short, you’re in control of your process improvement’s speed and reach.

The Wide Lens: What Successful Innovators See That Others Miss
by Ron Adner
Published 1 Mar 2012

See Exubera; Inhalable insulin insulin pens, 107–8 Intel electronic health record (EHR), 121–22 WiMAX, 133 Intermediaries in adoption chain, 55, 61–62 as complementors, 38, 86 in value blueprint, 86 International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF), 93 Internet, and electronic health records (EHRs), 121 iPad, 218–21 and e-book market, 100, 219 ecosystem carryover for, 218–21 market for, 218 media partners, 219–21 partner gains, fairness issue, 219–21 value blueprint, 220 iPhone, 210–17 and AT&T, 212, 214–15 App Store, 216–17 competitors, 211 ecosystem carryover for, 213–16 limitations of product, 211–12 staged expansion of, 216–17 success, reasons for, 213–19 and 3G market, 52, 211–12 timing factors, 147 value blueprint, 217 iPod, 140, 144–47 delayed entry, benefits of, 147, 156 features, 145 and iTunes, 146, 156, 164, 179, 209 staged expansion of, 209–10 success, reasons for, 144–47 timing, Jobs rationale for, 144–45, 208–9 value blueprint, 210 iTunes, and iPod success, 146, 156, 164, 179, 209 J Jobs, Steve, 144 and iPod development, 144–47, 156, 208–10 See also Apple Johnson Controls, 3 K Kaiser Permanente, electronic health records (EHRs), 131 Kapoor, Rahul, 150 Keurig coffeemaker, 29 Kindle, 95–100 digital rights management (DRM) issue, 97–98 ecosystem, benefits to, 97–99 features, 96 initial weakness, 95–96 and leadership effectiveness, 136–37 pricing, 98 as service versus device, 96–97, 134–35, 164, 178–79 versus Sony Reader, 96–97, 99–100 success, assessment of, 99–100 value blueprint, 96–99 value proposition, 96–97 King, Stephen, 89 Korris, Jim, 68–69 L Leadership basic requirements for, 117, 133, 136 core challenge, 117 digital cinema adoption, 70–71, 76, 136 versus followership, 117, 132–35 and innovation success, 5, 70–71, 76 payback period, 117, 136 qualifying for. See Leadership prism strength, assessment by followers, 133–35, 220–21 Leadership prism, 117–32 constructing by followers, 134 electronic health records (EHRs) example, 128–32 functions of, 117–18, 227 value proposition for, 118 Leaf, 169, 184 Lean start-up, 202n Lechleiter, John, 107 Levin, Julian, 71 LG, 3-D TV, 53 Librié, 90 Lonie, Susie, 196–98 M Magliano, George, 171 Mann, Alfred, 112 MannKind Corporation, inhalable insulin, 102, 105, 112 Mapping, value blueprint, 84–114 Marriott hotels, 29 Medical devices, Medtronic, 206 Medical errors, deaths related to, 118–19, 124 Medical records, electronic.

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However, this also doubled the price: the Roadster battery alone costs an estimated $36,000 (the base MSRP for the 2011 Roadster is $109,000), undermining its economic attractiveness to the mainstream. * Read the epilogue to the Better Place case on p. 235. * In the world of product development, a recent movement has been toward “lean start-up,” a key technique of which is the minimum viable product (also referred to as the minimum feature set). The minimum viable product approach espouses market testing with bare-bones prototypes that allows for maximum learning from test customer feedback with the least amount of product development.

Team Topologies: Organizing Business and Technology Teams for Fast Flow
by Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais
Published 16 Sep 2019

BarryOvereem.com (blog), August 7, 2015. http://www.barryovereem.com/how-i-used-the-spotify-squad-health-check-model/. Pais, Manuel. “Damon Edwards: DevOps is an Enterprise Concern” InfoQ, May 31, 2014. https://www.infoq.com/interviews/interview-damon-edwards-qcon-2014. Pais, Manuel. “Prezi’s CTO on How to Remain a Lean Startup after 4 Years.” InfoQ, October 5, 2012. https://www.infoq.com/news/2012/10/Prezi-lean-startup. Pais, Manuel, and Matthew Skelton. “The Divisive Effect of Separate Issue Tracking Tools.” InfoQ, March 22, 2017. https://www.infoq.com/articles/issue-tracking-tools. Pais, Manuel, and Matthew Skelton. “Why and How to Test Logging.” InfoQ, October 29, 2016. https://www.infoq.com/articles/why-test-logging.

Built for Growth: How Builder Personality Shapes Your Business, Your Team, and Your Ability to Win
by Chris Kuenne and John Danner
Published 5 Jun 2017

He is somewhat of a composite, with a Crusader-esque sense of mission for his ventures, combined with a Driver’s curiosity and confident market-sensing willingness to bet on his pattern recognition insights about emerging technology or social trends. And more recently, he’s honed an Explorer-like fascination with cracking the code of complex systems, in this case applying the lean startup framework of rigorous, iterative hypothesis-testing with customers to “evidence-based” entrepreneurship and innovation itself. As he says, “The entrepreneur who is not willing to fire the hypothesis leaves no choice but to fire themselves.” The Sponsor Dynamic: Aligning Financial and Other Supporters Crusaders may struggle in their search for the right investors because their ventures are often ahead of the current perceived market.

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He was, in effect, captain of a Lewis-and-Clark-style scouting team into the then frontier of the World Wide Web—dispatching his colleagues to identify and evaluate incumbent e-commerce solutions in the market. He asked them if Sony should buy or build this new platform. Their answer: build. He then captained his team of programmers and online marketers while also running interference for them with senior management across Sony. Similar to today’s lean-startup approach, Coopersmith’s team had an early Sony web store up and running, securely accepting credit cards online within a very short time. The team was located in San Francisco, away from Sony’s more formal US headquarters culture in New York. As Chris Pinkham understood when he was cracking the code for Amazon Web Services, physical (and cultural) distance from the mother ship can be a key element of the corporate builder’s success.

Subscribed: Why the Subscription Model Will Be Your Company's Future - and What to Do About It
by Tien Tzuo and Gabe Weisert
Published 4 Jun 2018

The MVP is a defining principle of cloud software development, and Kanye applied it to his music-writing process. What happens when a static product like an album turns into a fluid service like a music stream? All sorts of interesting things. Today thousands of musicians are benefiting from platforms like Patreon that give them a steady, dependable source of recurring revenue. Much like Eric Ries’s “Lean Startup” method, they’re shortening their product development cycle through experimentation, validated learning, and iteration. And they’re creating a virtuous feedback loop whereby customer responses help inform product development. By putting it out there—and letting subscribers pay for it—these musicians are successfully feeding their sales funnels without having to wait for a finished product (although I’m sure they wouldn’t put it that way!).

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See Internet of Things (IOT) iPhone, 3 IT department, 129–30, 189–99 business insights and, 198 evolving IT architecture to meet subscription economy needs, 197–99 financials and, 192 legacy IT architecture, structure of and problems associated with, 189–97 pricing and packaging and, 190–91, 199 renewals and, 191 sales to different customer groups and, 191–92 subscribers/customer metrics and, 190, 198 “It Doesn’t Matter” (Carr), 83 Jankowski, Simona, 26, 27 Janzer, Anne, 130 Jaws (film), 38 JCPenney, 22 Jobs, Steve, 39, 47 Johnny Walker Blue Label, 107 Johnson, Kevin, 33 just in time inventory, 16 Kaplan, 117 Kaplan, Ethan, 30–31 Katzenberg, Jeffrey, 46 Kelly, Kevin, 111 Kern, Mac, 60–61 Kmart, 22 Komatsu, 98–99 Kramer, Kelly, 95–96 Kreisky, Peter, 78 Lah, Thomas, 85–86, 96 Lean Startup method, 48 leasing versus subscription model, for automobiles, 52–53 Lemonade, 118 Lessin, Jessica, 66, 68 Levie, Aaron, 167–68, 198–99 Life of Pablo, The (album), 48, 136–37 linear order-to-cash systems, 192–97 livestreaming, 42 LL Cool J, 101 LO3 Energy, 119 Loot Crate, 28 Lotto, Mark, 75 Lucas, George, 136 Lyft, 3, 54–55 Lynda.com, 31, 117 MacKenzie, Angus, 72 McGraw-Hill, 12–13 McKinsey, 11, 34, 98, 112–13, 165, 173, 218, 221 Macy’s, 14 Magellan Health, 115 Main, Andy, 121–22 malls, 17, 22, 34–35 Manifesto for Agile Software Development, 135–36 manufacturing industry, 100–101, 103–13 digital twins of physical machinery and, 104–6 focusing on outcomes instead of products, 106–11 future of, 111–13 margins, 15 marketing, 130–31, 143–55 experiences, communicating brand through, 145, 149 one-on-one marketing, 145–46 optimizing growth within service itself, 145 place (channels) and, 146, 147–48 pricing and packaging and, 146, 151–54 promotion and, 146, 149–51 subscriber IDs and, 146 Three Rooms mental model of storytelling and, 149–51 traditional role and techniques of, 143–44 Marketo, 190 MarketTools, 171 Marshall, John, 68 Martin-Flickinger, Gerri, 141 Mashable, 66 mass production, 37 media industry, 37–50 community, building, 43 content creation, investment in, 41 continuous innovation and, 136–37 Hollywood, historical business model of, 37–38 livestreaming, 42 mass production of movies in, 37 music industry, historical business model of, 38–39 music streaming services, 46–50 Netflix show, business model for, 41 portfolio effect and, 37, 41 streaming services and, 39–50 subscription video on demand (SVOD), 42–46 Meeker, Mary, 21 Membership Economy, The (Baxter), 29 Merry Christmas (album), 38 Metallica, 39 Metromile, 118 Microsoft, 56, 83, 89 minimum viable product, 48 ModCloth, 23 Moffett, Craig, 45 Molotov, 46 monetizing longtail content business model, 38 Money element, of PADRE operating model, 204 MOOCs (massive open online courses), 117 Mooney, Andy, 31–32 Motor Trend, 72–73, 79 MoviePass, 2 Mukherjee, Subrata, 74 multiple of three factors, for gauging reader engagement, 74 music streaming services, 46–50 BowieNet and, 47 minimum viable product and, 48 Prince’s NPG Music Club and, 47–48, 49–50 virtuous feedback loop, creating, 48–49 My Royal Canin, 118 Napster, 39 NCR, 13 negative option model, 28–30 Nest, 119 net account growth, 211–13 Netflix, 2, 3, 13, 18–19, 39, 40–41, 69, 139–40, 145, 161, 198 Newman, Nic, 69 New Relic, 166–67 newspaper industry, 65–79 ad-based business model, decline of, 66–70 digital subscribers, growth in, 65–66 enthusiast networks, 72–73 freemium model and, 76 multiple of three factors, for gauging reader engagement, 74 New York Times, subscription-first model of, 75–79 pricing agility and, 73–74 print versus digital myths, 70–71 reader’s wants and needs, prioritizing, 70–71 subscription/ad revenue mix, flipping, 75–76 New Yorker, The, 65, 66–67 New York Times, The, 65, 72–73, 75–79 Ngenic, 109–11 Nichols, Jim, 52 Nordstrom, 33 NPG Music Club, 47–48, 49–50 O’Brien, Mike, 51 Okta, 3 One Medical, 115 one-on-one marketing, 145–46 OnStar, 55–56, 148 Oracle, 4, 83, 190 Pacioli, Luca, 176–78 packaging.

Platform Scale: How an Emerging Business Model Helps Startups Build Large Empires With Minimum Investment
by Sangeet Paul Choudary
Published 14 Sep 2015

INTRODUCTION Building Interaction-First Platforms Design before you optimize! Scalable and sustainable business models need to be designed before they can be optimized. Optimizing poor design just makes a poorly designed system worse. The discipline of testing and measuring, championed by the Lean Startup movement, is an extremely important one. Entrepreneurs approach solution development by testing the key hypotheses that could lead to business failure. While the discipline of testing is important, the single most important decision in testing is the choice of the hypothesis to be tested. Without clarity on the most important hypotheses, one can waste a lot of time testing irrelevant hypotheses and optimizing poor design.

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Unlike single-user products, platforms must cater to multiple user roles. The core interaction defines the minimum unit of value creation and exchange that caters to the key roles on the platform. The minimum viable platform should ensure that it designs all four actions in the core interaction sufficiently to enable the end-to-end interaction. In the Lean Startup methodology, one often builds out a product by validating a set of hypotheses sequentially. Every iteration of the platform may validate a hypothesis related to one of the four actions, but it is important to ensure that all other actions are also designed into the platform. Without designing the entire interaction, it may be counterproductive to try to test a hypothesis related to an individual action.

Buy Then Build: How Acquisition Entrepreneurs Outsmart the Startup Game
by Walker Deibel
Published 19 Oct 2018

Try to understand the driver behind a company’s value and how to best scale it. How to accelerate it, change it, or keep it as a lifestyle business. Looking at businesses this way allows the company to tell you what the growth strategy is. This is critically important to the entire process of finding your match. In Eric Reis’ The Lean Startup, he coined the term pivot to describe changes during entrepreneurial product development. Always turning to user data and customer feedback to tweak the next iteration of the product in order to build the product the market wants and attain product-market fit. In management, this happens all the time—it just doesn’t look like a startup.

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Nall Middle market M & A: handbook for investment banking and business consulting Hoboken: Wiley and Sons Inc., 2012 Osterwalder, Alexander and Yves Pigneur Business model generation a handbook for visionaries, game changers, and challengers Hoboken: Wiley 281 & Sons, 2010 Parker, Richard How to Buy a Good Business at a Great Price Fort Lauderdale:Diomo, 2013 Peters, Basil Early exits: exit strategies for entrepreneurs and angel investors (but maybe not venture capitalists). Canada: MeteorBytes, 2009. Porter, M. E. Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors. New York: Free Press, 1980 Rath, Tom. StrengthsFinder 2.0 New York: Gallop Inc., 2007 Ries, Eric. The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses. New York: Crown Business, 2011. Ruback, Richard and Yudkoff Royce. HBR Guide to Buying a Small Business. Harvard Business Review Press, 2017. Seligman, Martin E. P. Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-Being. 2013.

Open for Business Harnessing the Power of Platform Ecosystems
by Lauren Turner Claire , Laure Claire Reillier and Benoit Reillier
Published 14 Oct 2017

Some of the difficulties for existing firms considering a transition to a platform model or add-on will be discussed in Chapter 14. Notes 1 Business model generation, with its previously mentioned business model canvas tool, is a good start. 2 Eric Ries’s The Lean Startup has become a de rigueur read for any would-be entrepreneur keen to change the world on a limited budget. See E. Ries, The Lean Startup, New York: Crown Publishing, 2011. 3 While Hilton can manage and tightly control the experience of its guests, Airbnb can only influence the experience provided by the hosts. 4 Henry Blodget, 19 January 2015, Business Insider, http://uk.businessinsider.com/uberrevenue-san-francisco-2015-1. 5 Hilton Investor Presentation, November 2015. 6 The Platform Design Toolkit 2.0, the ecosystem’s motivation matrix, by Simone Cicero, www.meedabyte.com. 7 Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky routinely tweets their nights booked milestones. 8 Alex Schultz, How to Start a Start-up, Lecture 6: Growth, Sam Altman. 9 We have seen a number of interesting implementations of Mirakl at Galeries Lafayette, Darty, Halfords and l’Equipe. 10 LoveKnitting, the marketplace for knitting yarn, patterns and needles, was initially built on Magento.

The End of Big: How the Internet Makes David the New Goliath
by Nicco Mele
Published 14 Apr 2013

A full 172 government agencies and subagencies participate, releasing their data online. This would appear to be a substantial platform that citizens and the private sector can build upon. And in the entire United States, a country rife with innovation and an appetite for experimentation, where The $100 Startup, The Lean Startup, and The Startup of You were all best-selling titles, a country where an estimated 30,000 new companies are started every year,26 where more than 600 apps are submitted to the Apple iTunes App Store daily27—how many apps over three years have been written for Data.gov? Just 236 apps have been developed for citizens; 1,264 apps have been developed by government agencies either for use by citizens or by other government agencies.

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. … All you have to do to serve them well is build a minimal infrastructure allowing them to get together and work things out for themselves. Any additional features are almost certainly superfluous and could even be damaging.35 This way of thinking in software design has a long pedigree—back to the “scratch your own itch” of Eric Raymond’s The Cathedral and the Bazaar, but more recently in the best-selling The Lean Startup, whose core admonition is to arrive at the minimum viable product as quickly as possible. It’s a compelling vision for running a software company or even an online services company. But does it work as an approach to government? Not so much. As Gary Wolf puts it in the Wired profile: His cause is not helped by the fact that if the Craigslist management style resembles any political system, it is not democracy but rather a low-key popular dictatorship. … Its inner workings are obscure, it publishes no account of its income or expenses, it has no obligation to respond to criticism, and all authority rests in the hands of a single man.36 I don’t mean to single out Newmark.

Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People?
by Thomas Frank
Published 15 Mar 2016

For a comprehensive list of all the Obama personnel who came from or departed to Silicon Valley, see Cecilia Kang and Juliet Eilperin, “Why Silicon Valley Is the New Revolving Door for Obama Staffers,” Washington Post, February 28, 2015. “Obama’s lean startup” is also known as “18F”; it’s a unit of the General Services Administration. See Elaine Chen, “Building Obama’s Lean Startup in America’s Biggest Bureaucracy,” TechBeacon, July 23, 2015; Jon Gertner, “Inside Obama’s Stealth Startup,” Fast Company, June 15, 2015.   3. The exchange can be watched on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8URYPna1lhw.   4. 

Upscale: What It Takes to Scale a Startup. By the People Who've Done It.
by James Silver
Published 15 Nov 2018

CHAPTER 8 ‘Build a talent pipeline’, ‘Offer employee equity’ and ‘Beware title inflation’. Index Ventures’ Director of Talent Dominic Jacquesson has 19 tips on how to scale talent. One of the most difficult adjustments founders face, particularly in the immediate aftermath of raising their Series A round, is the change of mindset from ‘lean startup’ mode to one where they’re suddenly required to go hell for leather on growth, argues Index Ventures’ Director of Talent, Dominic Jacquesson. And this attitudinal shift is felt particularly keenly in recruitment. ‘They have to go from being super-tight and efficient on hiring, and really holding back by doing everything as far as possible themselves, to suddenly having several million in the bank and being told [by investors] to ramp up recruitment to enable them to scale successfully,’ he says.

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But for founders of other types of digital business, what are the signals entrepreneurs should be looking for when it comes to deciding where to open their first overseas offices? ‘The first thing you’re looking for is product/market fit,’ replies Corstorphine. ‘And I don’t believe you need to set up an operation or office on the ground in a market just to see whether you’re starting to achieve product/market fit or not. In lean-startup principles you would chuck the product out there, you would push it a little bit, you might spend a little bit of money on advertising just to try to get some traffic to your site. Then you’d test it; product/market fit tends to be measurable primarily in terms of retention, but also activation metrics.

Modern Monopolies: What It Takes to Dominate the 21st Century Economy
by Alex Moazed and Nicholas L. Johnson
Published 30 May 2016

The idea of first-mover advantage was so powerful that, according to technology columnist Kevin Maney at USA Today, “it could instantly win a startup millions of dollars in financing, boatloads of publicity and board members who seemed, for a moment anyway, important.”33 Be the first to take over any new business category on the Web and it was yours, or so the thinking went. The idea of first-mover advantage took a hit after the dot-com bubble burst, but it still lives on today. Steve Blank, a serial entrepreneur and one of the founders of the Lean Startup movement, called first-mover advantage “an idea that just won’t die.”34 In the past, part of the problem was that this concept was applied to businesses that didn’t have any real network effects and very little sustainable advantage, even if they were to succeed. Pets.com and Kozmo.com are both examples from the dot-com era.

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Morgan, 23, 234 Kalanick, Travis, 102, 134, 230 Kantorovich, Leonid, 52–53 Keynes, John Maynard, 107 Kickstarter, 30, 77–78, 114, 183 Kozmo.com, 64, 175 Krugman, Paul, 64, 67 LakePlace.com, 130 Lange, Oskar, 61, 63, 71, 73 Lazaridis, Mike, 7–11 Lean Startup movement, 175 Lending Club, 46, 77–78, 113–14, 215, 231 Lenovo, 23, 210 Lessin, Sam, 122–23 linear business model: competition and, 68, 74–75; connection and, 112, 114; data and, 100; defined, 240; explained, 22–24; investment and, 81–82; legal issues and, 213; market size and, 93; monopolies and, 103; platforms and, 29, 31–33, 109–11, 116, 192, 215; privacy and, 108; Samsung and, 212; supply chain, 24–25; transactions and, 116–17; U-shaped economies of scale curve for, 60; value and, 39, 84–85, 152, 231; zero-marginal-cost and, 85–89 LinkedIn, 17–18, 30, 46, 82, 87, 118, 120–21, 155, 190, 206, 224 Linux, 33–35, 139, 234 liquidity, 121, 130, 132, 135, 181, 192, 199, 240 local knowledge, 54–55, 59, 70, 73 Lyft, 30, 45, 121, 127, 152, 181, 186, 194, 199, 205–6, 216 Ma, Jack, 96–98, 227 margins, 89–90, 93, 95 market size, 87–88, 93 matching intention, 41–42, 47, 241 matchmaking: collaborative filtering, 134–35; commoditization and, 46; core transactions and, 47, 126; creating rules and standards, 136–38; explained, 126; measuring success, 135–36; overview, 132–33; preventing unintended consequences, 143–46; Twitter and, 138–43; Uber and, 133–34; Yahoo and, 135–36 McLuhan, Marshall, 51 MDLIVE, 80 “Meaning of Competition, The” (Hayek), 53 Medium, 41–42, 116, 125, 181 MeeGo, 1–2 Mehta, Apoorva, 147–49 Metcalfe’s Law, 168–70, 175, 183, 241 Metromile, 206 Microsoft, 1, 3, 15, 18, 29–31, 35, 62, 68, 99, 106–7, 180–81, 196 MIT, 62, 165 mobile technology, 65, 67 monetary subsidies: attracting high-value users, 199–200; cooperating with industry incumbents, 196–97; providing security through large, up-front investment, 196; providing single-user utility, 201; targeting user groups, 200–1 monopolies: business model and, 97–99; competition and, 105–8; government-sponsored, 74–75; old vs. new, 100–3; overview, 95–97; platform capitalism, 99–100 Moore, Gordon, 61 Moore’s Law, 61, 174 Motorola, 10, 210–12 MySpace, 144, 162–65, 167, 169, 172–76, 179–80, 183 Navani, Girish, 79–80 Net neutrality, 18 Netflix, 100 network ecosystem, 69 network effects ladder: collaboration, 184–85; communication, 183; community, 185–86; connection, 183; curation, 183–84; diagram, 182; overview, 182–83 Nokia, 1–8, 11, 14–15, 81, 106 Nosek, Luke, 131 Obama, Barack, 130–31 Omidyar, Pierre, 21–22, 27 on-demand, 29, 32, 45, 80, 90, 147, 150, 194, 220, 222, 228 Open Handset Alliance (OHA), 10 open source, 10, 33–36, 38, 78, 107, 220, 234 OpenTable, 89–90, 201, 222 opt-ins: double, 43, 118–19, 122, 152–53, 165, 241; single, 118–20 Oracle, 23, 79 PayPal, 18, 37, 74, 131–32, 149, 159, 194, 214 perfect information, 36, 52–54 Pets.com, 20–22, 27, 29, 32, 64, 175 Pinterest, 30, 82, 106, 181–82 Pishevar, Shervin, 160 platforms: anatomy of, 39–41; competition between, 99–100, 103, 106, 222; computing, 32; costs, 36–37; definition, 29; design, 46–47; examples, 29–31; exchange, 41, 43–44; expansion of markets, 103–5; industry, 32; maker, 41, 44; matching intention and, 41–43; monopolies, 99–101; platform capitalism, 99–100; product, 32; as service, 32; types, 43–46 Porter, Michael, 57–60, 69, 72, 86, 97–98, 110, 112, 131, 242 Preston, Dan, 206 Preston-Warner, Tom, 35 privacy, 108, 155, 174, 179, 229 processing power, 29, 61–63, 65–67, 70, 233 product features: acting as producer, 197–98; attracting high-value users, 199–200; providing single-user utility, 201; tapping into existing network, 198; targeting user groups, 200–1 profitability, 22, 29, 107, 211 ProGit, 36 QQ, 19, 154, 218 QWERTY keyboards, 8, 11 Rakuten, 30 recommendations, 100, 116 Red Cross, 132 Red Hat, 33–34 Redpoint Ventures, 120, 138 Reidman, Hoff, 78 repeat business, 91–92 reputation, 96, 100, 107, 116, 129, 144–45, 154, 160, 164, 174, 177–78, 180, 183–84 Research in Motion (RIM), 7–15; see also BlackBerry restaurants, 89–90, 201, 225; see also GrubHub; OpenTable rewards, 115–16 Riedel, Josh, 144 Road to Serfdom (Hayek), 53 Roberts, Matthew, 90 Rubin, Andy, 10 rules and standards, 136–38 Salesforce, 79 Samsung, 10, 84, 94, 211–12, 231 Sandberg, Sheryl, 139 SAP, 79 Sarver, Ryan, 138–41, 145 Scoble, Robert, 191 search, 6, 18, 37, 45–46, 73, 95, 97–99, 105–7, 116, 130, 133, 135–36, 154, 196, 206, 208, 219–22, 233; see also Alibaba; Baidu; Google showrooming, 50 simplicity, 122–23, 147 Skype, 18, 42, 114 smartphones Snapchat, 30, 38, 81–82, 114, 191, 201 Social Finance (SoFi), 30, 231 social networking, 18, 35, 43, 46, 67, 74, 81, 118–22, 142, 153, 161, 163–67, 170, 172–74, 176, 189–90, 194, 198, 200–1, 213, 221, 224, 235 software as a service (SaaS), 23, 33, 79, 85, 227 software development kit (SDK), 13–14 SoundCloud, 77 Spotify, 184, 203–4 Square, 18, 30 Standard Oil, 22, 100–2, 107 startups, 15, 22, 30–31, 46, 74, 77, 80, 83–85, 97, 107, 120–21, 129–30, 147, 156, 172, 175, 177, 184–85, 190–92, 195, 197, 205, 219, 223, 231, 235 Steel, Anna, 151–52 storage, 66, 68, 79 Super Bowl ads, 20 supply chain, 4, 18, 22–26, 29, 69, 89 Symbian, 1–2, 4, 32 Taobao.

The End of Nice: How to Be Human in a World Run by Robots (Kindle Single)
by Richard Newton
Published 11 Apr 2015

The team of founders – typically two or three people at the outset – sell a small percentage of their business to the program in return for a small amount of cash plus the intense mentoring, coaching, resources, access to investors and relevant industry experts and potential customers. “Fail harder” urges a poster tacked to one wall. Others ask of you: “Move Fast and Break Things” and “What Would You Do If You Weren’t Afraid?”. In start-up-land, failure has become a component of the methodology for success. The Lean Startup, a book that codifies the start-up business approach, has become the management textbook for building success on failure. “You need to create a discipline to enable you to fail and learn fast,” said its author, Eric Ries. “A management discipline for failure.” The success and reputation of accelerators is such that in 2012 the business publication Forbes ran an article headlined: “Would you rather get into Y-Combinator, 500 Start-Ups, TechStars… or Harvard Business School?”

Growth Hacking Techniques, Disruptive Technology - How 40 Companies Made It BIG – Online Growth Hacker Marketing Strategy
by Robert Peters
Published 18 May 2014

Growth Hacker Marketing: A Primer on the Future PR, Marketing, and Advertising. Portfolio, 2013. Maurya, Ash. Running Lean: Iterate from Plan A to a Plan That Works. O’Reilly Media, 2012. McClure, Dave. “Startup Metrics 4 Pirates.” Slideshare presentation at www.slideshare.net/dmc500hats/startup-metrics-for-pirates-nov-2012 Ries, Eric. The Lean Startup: How Today’s entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses. Crown Business, 2011. Schranz, Thomas. Growth Engineering 101: A Step-by-Step Guide for Founders, Product Managers and Marketers. (See www.blossom.io/growth-engineering) Vilner, Yoav. “Growth Jacking 101: Read This to Become a Magician.” www.ranky.co/growth-hacking-101-read-become-magician/ Yongfook, Jon. “21 Actionable Growth Hacking Tactics.” yongfook.com/actionable-growth-hacking-tactics.html Suggestions / Reviews I really hope you liked the book and found it useful.

Hacking Growth: How Today's Fastest-Growing Companies Drive Breakout Success
by Sean Ellis and Morgan Brown
Published 24 Apr 2017

In reality, their success was driven by the methodical, rapid-fire generation and testing of new ideas for product development and marketing, and the use of data on user behavior to find the winning ideas that drove growth. If this iterative process sounds familiar, it’s likely because you’ve encountered a similar approach in agile software development or the Lean Startup methodology. What those two approaches have done for new business models and product development, respectively, growth hacking does for customer acquisition, retention, and revenue growth. Building on these methods was natural for Sean and other start-up teams, because the companies that Sean advised and others that developed the method were stacked with great engineering talent familiar with the methods, and because the founders were inclined to apply a similar approach to customer growth as the engineers applied to their software and product development.

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Building on these methods was natural for Sean and other start-up teams, because the companies that Sean advised and others that developed the method were stacked with great engineering talent familiar with the methods, and because the founders were inclined to apply a similar approach to customer growth as the engineers applied to their software and product development. Central to agile development is increasing the speed of development, working in short “sprints” of coding, and regularly testing and iterating on the product over time. The Lean Startup adopted the practice of rapid development and frequent testing, and added the practice of getting a minimum viable product out on the market and into the hands of actual users as soon as possible, to get real user feedback and establish a viable business. Growth hacking adopted the continuous cycle of improvement and the rapid iterative approach of both methods and applied them to customer and revenue growth.

The Education of Millionaires: It's Not What You Think and It's Not Too Late
by Michael Ellsberg
Published 15 Jan 2011

As I spoke with Max, overlooking the sea, a friend of Max’s spotted him and walked up to us. Max introduced us: “Hey Michael, this is Trevor. He’s also an entrepreneur who’s leaving school.” “Leaving school?” Trevor cut in as if to correct an insulting slight. “I’ve already left school!” Trevor Owens had left NYU during his senior year to help build The Lean Startup Machine (http://theleanstartupmachine.com), a series of intensive boot camps designed to promote entrepreneurialism and train entrepreneurs in the business principles of “lean thinking.” I had never been on a cruise before. The series was originally the brainchild of Elliott Bisnow, who had left Wisconsin to pursue his dreams.

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See Meaningful work, creating Ilovemarketing.com Institute for Integrative Nutrition Intelligence, practical versus academic Internet marketing guru online presence, building and self-created business and self-education YourName.com, importance of Investments, bootstrapper’s method IQ, and success IronPort Iteration velocity John Paul Mitchell Systems Johnson, Cameron as college non-graduate success, evolution of Jong, Erica Kaufman, Josh Kawasaki, Guy Keillor, Garrison Kennedy, Dan as college non-graduate direct-response marketing Kerkorkian, Kirk Kern, Frank as college non-graduate direct-response marketing on power of selling success, evolution of Kiyosaki, Robert mentor of on power of selling Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers Knowledge workers, digital Marxism Komisar, Randy on safety versus risk La Flamme, Jena Cheng sales coaching as college non-graduate Deida relationship training direct-response marketing, use of success, evolution of Lalla, Annie and Eben Pagan Langan, Chris LaPorte, Danielle, success, evolution of Laugh-O-Gram Leadership definitions of and impact on many as new marketing as skill of success Lean Startup Machine Lerer, Ben Levchin, Max Leve, Brett Lifelong learning Linchpin concept Listening, importance of Loucks, Vernon Louis Marx and Company Luck, and success Lupton, Amber Lynda Limited McDermid, Hitch Mailer, Norman Maister, David Making a difference.

The Launch Pad: Inside Y Combinator, Silicon Valley's Most Exclusive School for Startups
by Randall Stross
Published 4 Sep 2013

It was about a twenty-minute drive from where the posh offices of venture capitalists on Sand Hill Road were concentrated, near Stanford, on the leafy west side of Menlo Park. The neighborhood of Pioneer Way belonged to a separate galaxy. YC sat among small manufacturers, and auto repair and body shops. The architecture in the neighborhood was strictly no-frills utilitarian—a good setting for lean startups. YC was there every other winter until 2009, when Graham and Livingston decided to make the Valley their permanent home and run the program there for both the winter and summer batches.4 Two years after YC’s founding, a seed fund named TechStars sprang up in Boulder, Colorado. It presented the first real competition to Y Combinator.

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Between the two, they had five children who were five years old or younger. To reduce expenses, the two families decided to share one rental house. What was available and within their budget was a 1,600-square-foot house that was far smaller than either family had in Birmingham. This meant that the founders were living and working in the close quarters typical of the lean startup—their office was a remodeled toolshed that sat in their tiny yard—made even closer by the fact that their families were living in the same confined space, too. Chris Steiner of Aisle50, whose home was in Chicago, also elected to come out with his wife and three-year-old son. His cofounder, Riley Scott, who was married and had a one-year-old, was already living in the Valley.

New Power: How Power Works in Our Hyperconnected World--And How to Make It Work for You
by Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms
Published 2 Apr 2018

She built on these successes through partnerships with organizations like Local Motors, the first-of-its kind new power car company we’ll profile in the next chapter, to crowd-source product development challenges to engineers, coders, and scientists, both online and in microfactories across the United States. Within GE, Comstock called on Eric Ries, author of the popular book The Lean Startup, to consult on a new way to encourage and speed up the company’s internal innovation and product design efforts and quickly incorporate early customer feedback. This led to the creation of the FastWorks program, which has now trained over 40,000 of GE’s leaders. FastWorks is leading a shift toward experimentation and prototyping, nudging norms at a company whose stock price has been in long-term decline and that some say has become too big to innovate.

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Her success in leading GE: Forbes, “The World’s 100 Most Powerful Women,” Forbes, July 2017. She chalked up early wins: GrabCAD, “GE Jet Engine Bracket Challenge,” GrabCAD Community, July 2017. www.grabcad.com. The winner was a young: Ibid. Within GE, Comstock called: Eric Ries, The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Business (New York: Crown Publishing Group, 2011). This led to the creation: GE, “GE//FastWorks,” Innovation Benchmark, March 11, 2016. A project to create a digital wind farm: GE, “GE 2015 Integrated Summary Report,” 2015, p. 19.

The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture
by Scott Belsky
Published 1 Oct 2018

Facebook’s infamous “move fast and break things” mantra, which graces everything from posters to coasters around Facebook’s campus, establishes a mind-set in technology and start-ups that the best path forward is always the fastest one, even when it’s reckless. This line of thought has inspired countless practices for how to manage projects, conduct meetings, and develop new products. The “lean start-up” methodology, which became a playbook on how to build a product efficiently, was popularized by Eric Ries’s book by the same name and has since spread beyond the start-up world and into the boardrooms of Fortune 500 companies. And for good reason! The bulky, slow processes that have long inhibited launches and learning in big companies were overdue for an overhaul.

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A/B testing, 93–94 Adams, Scott, 283 Adidas, 143 Adobe, 10–11, 43–44, 48, 85, 100, 115, 136, 159, 161–62, 185, 206–7, 233, 238, 254, 270, 273, 289, 337 Behance acquired by, 3, 10–11, 16, 43, 47, 130, 143, 151–52, 199, 280, 341–42, 347–48, 351–52, 359 Creative Cloud, 47, 159, 347 Illustrator, 10, 144, 162, 270 Photoshop, 10, 144, 159, 162, 185, 206–7, 238–39, 270, 347 adversity, 38, 39, 110–11 advice, 294–96 Aeon, 108 aging, 370–72 Airbnb, 64, 88–89, 259, 311 AirPods, 250 Alexa, 82, 210 aligned dynamism, 112 alignment, 206 Allen, Will, 101, 116–17, 118, 342 Alphabet, 83 Alta Vista, 189 Amabile, Teresa, 160 Amazon, 79, 81–82, 224–25, 336, 366–67 Alexa, 82, 210 ambiguity, 41, 183–84 American Express, 184 Amino, 261 Ancell, Brit, 343 Andreessen Horowitz, 29 angel groups, 107 anger, 73, 74 Anthropologie, 73 Antioco, John, 84 AppDynamics, 43 Apple, 40–41, 48, 57, 64, 141, 227, 239, 257, 265, 273, 366 AirPods, 250 iPad, 48, 250, 306 iPhone, 63, 250, 273, 374 iPod, 63, 295, 374 apprenticeship, 124–25 Army, U.S., 143 Aron, Arlis, 368–69 art vs. science of business, 310–13 Ash, Allan, 371 Ash, Neil, 371 Aspen Institute, 79 assumptions, 242–44, 308 attention, 335–36 Badeen, Jonathan, 260 Balakrishnan, Govind, 48 Barada, Taylor, 254 Basecamp, 90 Behance, 9–12, 16, 19, 24–25, 28, 33, 89–90, 100–101, 104, 108–9, 115–18, 121, 127, 130, 135, 136, 144, 151, 156, 160, 165, 173–74, 197, 216, 220, 226, 230, 233, 241, 248, 249, 252, 258, 311, 319, 321, 336, 341–43 Action Method, 220, 221 Adobe’s acquisition of, 3, 10–11, 16, 43, 47, 130, 143, 151–52, 199, 280, 341–42, 347–48, 351–52, 359 Behance Network, 9, 10, 220 competition and, 187–89 Google and, 24, 25 narrative of, 255–56 99U, 9–10, 26, 138, 167, 181, 197, 220, 221, 360 portfolio-review events of, 312–13 strategy document for, 280–81 Beilock, Sian, 228–29 Belsky, Erica, 4, 214, 352 Belsky, Julie, 111 Benchmark, 164, 275, 311 Berkshire Hathaway, 366 Berle, Milton, 203 Bernstein, Joe, 70, 112, 264–65 Bern University, 108 best practices, 294–95 Beykpour, Kayvon, 70, 112, 264–65 Beyoncé, 25 Bezos, Jeff, 79, 81–82, 224–25, 292, 336 biases, 205 Blank, Steve, 178 blind spots, 316–17, 350 Blockbuster, 83–84 Blue Apron, 210 Blue Origin, 336 body language, 172 “boulders” and “pebbles,” 182, 268 Bounty, 70 bounty program, 179 Box, 83, 224 Brahma, 374 brain, 107–8, 162, 167, 181, 196–97, 272 dopamine in, 26, 181, 272, 322 brainstorming, 78, 118 brand-product fit, 256, 257 brevity, 176 Bridgewater, 305–7 Brokaw, Tom, 71 Buddhism, 16, 67–68 Buffett, Warren, 366–67 Burbn, 36 bureaucracy, 183–84 Burks, Jewel, 120–21 Business Insider, 84 BuzzFeed, 44, 272, 313 Caltech, 272–73 Camerer, Colin, 272 Camp, Garrett, 112, 256–57 Captivate: The Science of Succeeding with People (Van Edwards), 172 Carbonmade, 187 Carlyle, Tom, 141 Carr, Austin, 259, 260 Carr, Thomas, 228–29 Carta, 204 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 143, 159 certainty and uncertainty, 32–34, 69, 224 change(s), 292, 325, 338 resistance to, 206–7, 295, 354 changing your mind, 292 Chaubad, Andre, 201 Cheddar, 44, 313 Chennault, Ken, 184 choosing, art of, 284–85 clarity, prompting with questions, 69–71 Clinton, Doug, 35–36 Clinton, Hillary, 275 CNBC, 313 Coco & Co., 217 Code for America, 165 Cohen, Peter, 72 cohesion horizon, 228 Collins, Jim, 260 commitments, 282–85, 318–19 communication, 153, 316 brevity in, 176 energy in, 43–45 explicitness in, 173–75 how and when to say something, 170–72 nonverbal, 172 real-time, 123 compartmentalizing, 66, 68 competition, 29, 63, 106, 139 changing landscape in, 275 channeling competitive energy, 187–91 competitive advantage, 152, 195, 214–15 diversity as, 107 outlasting as, 90 persistence as, 85 resourcefulness as, 100 self-awareness as, 54–56, 305 observing and learning from, 187–90 complacency, 191 complexity, 209–10 compromise, 178, 185 Comstock, Beth, 327 conflict, 73, 178, 185–86, 338 conformity, 57–58, 60 connectivity, constant, 327 consensus, conviction and, 203–5 context, 316–17 contribution, underestimating, 353–54 control, 32–33 Conversation, 108 ConversionXL, 162 conviction, consensus and, 203–5 cooperation, 38 Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, 161, 353–54 Copeland, Rob, 306, 307 copycats, 63 Corea, Matias, 108–9, 135, 144, 156, 162, 256, 319, 342 Coroflot, 187 corporate obesity, 46–48 Costello, Dick, 264 Couric, Katie, 71 Craigslist, 311 Creative Cloud, 47, 159, 347 creativity, 92, 107, 114–15, 302, 336, 373 and concern for what already is, 65–68 creative block, 192–93 creative meritocracy, 256 familiarity and, 226–27 relative joy of, 5–6 credit, 146–48, 330–32 criticism, 55, 296 culture, 114, 178 free radicals and, 137–39 stories and, 134–36 Cuomo, Rivers, 333–34 curiosity, 78–79, 93–95, 104, 129, 271–73, 336, 367 customers: engagement with engagement drivers, 269–70 mystery in, 271–73 the right customers at the right time, 251–54 following and playing to the middle, 274–75 forgiving, 251–53 ideal, 251 interest drivers and, 269–70 power users, 217 profitable, 251–53 valuable, 251–53 viral, 251, 253 willing, 251, 252 Dahis, Rafael, 299 Dalio, Ray, 305–7 D’Angelo, Adam, 167–68 data: intuition and, 300–304 metrics and measures, 28, 29, 297–99 debates and disagreements, 114 decision making, 33, 178, 184, 204, 206, 224–25, 271, 277 choices in, 284–85 satisficer and maximizer styles of, 229, 284–85 timing and, 289–90 decisiveness, 203, 224 defensiveness, 55, 71 delegation, 166–69 Delicious, 174 democracy, 333 dependency, 330 design, invisibility in, 230–31 DeviantArt, 89, 187–88 differentiation, 106–9 Digg, 267 Dignan, Aaron, 179 Dilbert, 283 disconnecting, 326–28 discussions, 112–13, 321 Disney, Walt, 222 distraction, 319, 371 diversity, 106–9, 110, 120–21 Dixon, Chris, 348 doers vs. dreamers, 118 dopamine, 26, 181, 272, 322 Dorsey, Jack, 264 doubt, 295–96 dreamers vs. doers, 118 DRI (Directly Responsible Individual), 167–68, 169 Dribbble, 188–89 Duckworth, Angela, 62–63 Duhigg, Charles, 122, 180 Dumas, Alexandre, 200–201 Dunkin’ Donuts, 44 DYFJ (do your fucking job), 49–51 dying, 26, 368–69, 373–75 early innings, 349–50, 374 easy option, 85 eBay, 258 Eco, Umberto, 374 Economist, 108 Edison, Thomas, 9–10 Edmondson, Amy, 122 ego, 330–32 ego analytics, 236, 335 eHarmony, 259 Eiffel, Gustave, 200 Eiffel Tower, 200–202 84 Lumber, 273 Einstein, Albert, 271 Eisenhower, Dwight D., 280 elephants in the room, 41, 179, 186, 338 email, 170, 171, 176, 181, 322 empathy, 71, 115, 120–21, 317, 331, 332 passion and, 248–50 employees: firing, 126–28, 178, 204 hiring, see hiring keeping people moving, 129–31 new, integration of, 121, 123 see also team endowment effect, 291 endurance, 14–15, 16, 19–92 embracing the long game, 77–92 breaking into chapters, 86–87 and doing the work, 91–92 expertise and, 88–90 and measures of productivity, 78–79 patience in, 80–85 leading through the anguish and the unknown, 23–51 corporate politics in, 46–48 DYFJ (do your fucking job), 49–51 energy in, 43–45 fighting resistance with a commitment to suffering, 35–36 friction in, 37–39 perspective in, 40–42 positive feedback and fake wins vs. hard truths, 28–31 processing uncertainty, 32–34 short-circuiting your reward system, 24–27 strengthening your resolve, 53–75 creation vs. concern for what already is, 65–68 and not fitting in, 57–58 OBECALP in, 59–61 perspective in, 62–64 reset in, 72–75 questions to prompt clarity, 69–71 self-awareness in, 54–56 energy, 43–45 Entrepreneur, 26, 73 Entrepreneurial Instinct, The (Mehta), 26 Erez, Ben, 28–29, 33 Expa, 112, 256 experience vs. initiative, in hiring, 103–5 expertise, 88–90, 105, 308 explicitness, 173–75, 271 Exposition Universelle, 200–201 Facebook, 39, 70, 167, 193, 194, 210, 227, 242, 244, 248, 249, 258, 272, 346–47, 349–50 Fadell, Tony, 63 failure, 41, 56, 94, 138, 331, 357 fairness, 259–60 false hope, 206–7 familiarity, 226–27, 308 Fast Company, 259, 272 Faulkner, William, 220 Faydi, Clément, 162, 248–49 FedEx, 210 feedback, 55, 123, 175, 281, 331 positive, and hard truths, 28–31 feelings, 55 Fernandez, Joe, 295, 296 Ferriss, Tim, 131, 221, 282–84 final mile, 339–75 approaching the finish line, 345–54 and final mile as different sport, 346–48 and resistance to outcome, 351–52 and staying in early innings, 349–50 and underestimating contribution, 353–54 finishing, 1, 6–8, 15–16, 341–75 never being finished, 365–75 continuing to learn, 366–67 living and dying, 368–69, 373–75 and trading time and money, 370–72 passing the baton, 355–63 ending gracefully, 356–57 finishing on your own terms, 361–63 identity and, 358–60 financing, 30–31, 102 firing people, 126–28, 178, 204 fitting in, 57–58 Flash, 48 flexibility, 324 focus, 282–85, 328, 335 Food and Drug Administration (FDA), 42 Forbes, 72 forgiveness, asking for permission vs., 199–202 founder-product fit, 256 Founders, 126 Four Hour Body, The (Ferriss), 283 free radicals, 137–39 French Revolution, 200, 201 friction, 37–39, 210, 371, 372 Fried, Jason, 90 fringe, 58 frugality, 140–42 Game of Thrones, 270 Gates, Bill, 295 Gebbia, Joe, 88–89, 311 General Electric (GE), 125, 130, 143, 327 Getable, 356–57 Gibson, William, 257 Giffon, Jeremy, 294 Gigerenzer, Gerd, 285 Gilbert, Dan, 196–97 Glei, Jocelyn, 181 goals, long-term, 26–27, 66, 299, 304, 350 Godin, Seth, 297, 298, 337–38 Goldberg, Dave, 39 Goldman Sachs, 125, 143, 240–41, 341 Google, 24, 25, 60, 67, 83, 93, 101, 139, 189, 239, 366–67 Maps, 210 Project Aristotle, 122 Trends, 301–2 government and politics, corporate, 46–48 grafting talent, 119–25 Graham, Paul, 193 Grant, Adam, 39 Grant, Angela, 108 grit, 62–63 Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance (Duckworth), 62 groups, 38–39, 107, 203–4 Gunatillake, Rohan, 360 Gurley, Bill, 79, 311 Gut Feelings (Gigerenzer), 285 hardship, 38, 39 Harvard Business Review, 39, 250 Harvard Business School, 117, 122, 160, 214, 262 Hashemi, Sam, 164–65 Hastings, Reed, 83–84, 126 HBO, 270 Heiferman, Scott, 168, 243–44 Higa, James, 141 Hindu theology, 374 hiring: adversity and, 110–11 discussions and, 112–13 diversity and, 106–9, 110 and initiative vs. experience, 103–5 of polarizing people, 114–15 and resourcefulness vs. resources, 100–102 talent and, 119–25 Hogan-Brun, Gabrielle, 107–8 Homebrew, 294, 359 honeymoon phase, 209 Hope, Bradley, 306, 307 Horowitz, Ben, 29–30 House Party, 265 humility, 56, 193, 331, 350 passion and, 248–50 Huxley, Aldous, 204 Hyer, Tim, 356–57 identity, 358–60, 362–63 if-onlys, 74 ignorance, 308–9 Illustrator, 10, 144, 162, 270 imagination, 326–28, 336 immune system: of society, 35, 36, 60 of team, 116–18, 119, 127 impact, 31 Improv Everywhere, 113 incrementalism, 207, 242–44, 289 influence, and credit, 330–32 information-gap theory, 272 initiative vs. experience, in hiring, 103–5 innovation, 57, 60, 102, 106–7, 118, 143, 183, 204, 250 inbred, 245–46 mistakes and unexpected in, 324–25 insecurity work, 66–67, 68 Instagram, 36, 44, 174, 189, 227, 235–36, 335, 349 institutions, 354 intention, 175 internet, 258 intuition, 294–96, 300–304, 321 inverted-U behavior, 272–73 investment, 78, 290 iPad, 48, 250, 306 iPhone, 63, 250, 273, 374 iPod, 63, 295, 374 Jaffe, Eric, 272 Jenks, Patty, 84 Jobs, Steve, 40–41, 63, 64, 141, 295 Johnstone, Ollie, 222 Jones, Malcolm, 104 Journal of Experimental Psychology, 228 Joymode, 295 June, 226–27 Jung, Carl, 56, 115 Kalina, Noah, 190 Kalmikoff, Jeffrey, 267–68 Kane, Becky, 229 Kaplan, Stanley, 358–59 Kay, Alan, 308 Kerr, Steve, 125 King, Stephen, 220 Klout, 295 Krop, 187 Laja, Peep, 162 language, multilingualism and, 107–9 laziness, vanity, and selfishness, 235–37 LCD Soundsystem, 92 leaders, leadership, 127, 147, 205, 277, 331 delegation and, 166–69 internal marketing and, 158–60 70/20/10 model for development of, 125 as stewards vs. owners, 258–61 timing and, 288–89 “lean start-up” methodology, 194 learning, 63–64, 366–67 LearnVest, 65–66 Lehrer, Jonah, 272 Levie, Aaron, 83, 224 Levo League, 73 LeWitt, Sol, 58 life expectancy, 26 Lightroom, 270 Linguanomics: What Is the Market Potential of Multilingualism? (Hogan-Brun), 107 LinkedIn, 181, 258 listening, 321 lists, 374 living and dying, 26, 368–69, 373–75 Livingston, Jessica, 101–2 local maxima, 242, 243–44, 289 Loewenstein, George, 272 long-term goals, 26–27, 66, 299, 304, 350 Loup Ventures, 35 Louvre Pyramid, 200–202 Lyft, 191 Macdonald, Hugo, 37–38 Macworld, 295 Maeda, John, 107, 186, 308, 354 magic of engagement, 273 Making Ideas Happen (Belsky), 159, 190, 222 Managed by Q, 221 Marcus Aurelius, 39 market-product fit, 256 Marquet, David, 167 Mastercard, 275, 303–4 Match.com, 259 Maupassant, Guy de, 201 maximizers, 229, 284–85 McKenna, Luke, 217 McKinsey & Company, 72 Meerkat, 265 meetings, 44, 78, 176 Meetup, 168, 243–44 Mehta, Monica, 26 merchandising, internal, 158–60 metrics and measures, 28, 29, 297–99 microwave ovens, 325 middle, 1, 3–4, 7–8, 14–15, 20, 40, 209, 211, 375 volatility of, 1, 4, 6, 8, 12, 14–16, 21, 209 milestones, 25, 27, 31, 40 minimum viable product (MVP), 86, 186, 195, 252 Minshew, Kathryn, 72–73 misalignment, 153–55 mistakes, 324–25, 336 Mitterand, François, 201 Mix, 256 Mizrahi, Isaac, 324 mock-ups, 161–63 momentum, 29 money, raising, 30–31, 102 Monocle, 37 Morin, Dave, 273 motivation, 24 multilingualism, 107–9 Murphy, James, 92 Muse, The, 72, 73 Musk, Elon, 168, 273 Muslims, 302–3 Myspace, 89, 187–88, 349 mystery, 271–73 naivety, 308–9 Narayan, Shantanu, 289 narrative and storytelling, 40–42, 75, 87, 271 building, before product, 255–57 culture and, 134–36 National Day of Unplugging, 328 naysayers, 295 negotiation, 286–87 Negroponte, Nicholas, 107 Nest, 63 Netflix, 83–84, 126 networking, 138–39 networks, 258–61, 283, 284, 320–21 Newsweek, 38 New York Times, 63, 122, 275 Next, 141 99U Conference, 9–10, 26, 138, 167, 181, 197, 220, 221, 360 no, saying, 282–84, 285, 319, 371, 372 Noguchi, Isamu, 141 noise and signal, 320–21 Northwestern Mutual, 66 novelty, and utility, 240–41 NPR, 196 “NYC Deli Problem,” 174 Oates, Joyce Carol, 192 OBECALP, 59–61 obsession, 104–5, 229, 313, 326 Oculus, 350 Odeo, 36 office space, 140–41 openness, 308–9, 350 OpenTable, 79 opinions, 64, 305–7, 317 opportunities, 282–85, 319, 324, 325, 371 optimization, 8, 14–15, 16, 93–338 see also product, optimizing; self, optimizing; team, optimizing Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy (Sandberg and Grant), 39 options, managing, 284–85 organizational debt, 178–79 outlasting, 90 outsiders, 88, 105 Page, Larry, 60 Pain, 59 Paperless Post, 239 Paradox of Choice, The: Why More Is Less (Schwartz), 284 parallel processing, 33 parenting, 371, 372 Partpic, 120 passion, empathy and humility before, 248–50 path of least resistance, 85 patience, 78, 80–85, 196 cultural systems for, 81–82, 85 personal pursuit of, 84–85 structural systems for, 83–84, 85 “pebbles” and “boulders,” 182, 268 Pei, I.

Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products
by Nir Eyal
Published 26 Dec 2013

How can you implement the concepts in this book to measure your product’s effectiveness in building user habits? Through my studies and discussions with entrepreneurs at today’s most successful habit-forming companies, I’ve distilled this process into what I term Habit Testing. It is a process inspired by the “build, measure, learn” methodology championed by the lean start-up movement. Habit Testing offers insights and actionable data to inform the design of habit-forming products. It helps clarify who your devotees are, what parts (if any) of your product are habit forming, and why those aspects of your product are changing user behavior. Habit Testing does not always require a live product; however, it can be difficult to draw clear conclusions without a comprehensive view of how people are using your system.

The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials Into Triumph
by Ryan Holiday
Published 30 Apr 2014

Pressfield, Stephen. The War of Art: Winning the Inner Creative Battle. New York: Rugged Land, 2002. ———. Turning Pro: Tap Your Inner Power and Create Your Life’s Work. New York: Black Irish Entertainment, 2012. ———. The Warrior Ethos. New York: Black Irish Entertainment, 2011. Ries, Eric. The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses. New York: Crown Business, 2011. Roosevelt, Theodore. Strenuous Epigrams of Theodore Roosevelt. New York. HM Caldwell, 1904. Sandlin, Lee. “Losing the War.” Chicago Reader. March 6, 1997. ———.

Mastering Private Equity
by Zeisberger, Claudia,Prahl, Michael,White, Bowen , Michael Prahl and Bowen White
Published 15 Jun 2017

Finally, the entrepreneur’s declining equity stake following each round of investment shows clearly the impact of dilution when raising external funding.13 Some founders question the merit of giving up substantial amounts of equity in return for venture funding. They often consider an alternative: growing the company organically without external funding by conservatively managing the early stage with their own capital and trying to quickly grow revenue. With the rise of the “lean start-up”14 model (and the availability of low-cost funding sources, i.e., crowd funding), this alternative path has become a realistic option for certain business models.15 What Is a Venture Capitalist? By Brad Feld, Managing Director, Foundry Group One of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make is to assume that all VCs are the same.

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Kaplan, S.N. and Lerner, J. (2010) It Ain’t Broke: The Past, Present, and Future of Venture Capital, Journal of Applied Corporate Finance, 22: 36–47. Kauffman Foundation (2012) We Have Met the Enemy—and He is Us, http://www.kauffman.org/∼/media/kauffman_org/research%20reports%20and%20covers/2012/05/we_have_met_the_enemy_and_he_is_us.pdf. Reis, E. (2008) The Lean Startup. Wasserman, Naom, Nazeeri, Furqan and Anderson, Kyle (2012) A “Rich-vs.-King” Approach to Term Sheet Negotiations, HBS. For detailed discussion on term sheets please refer to: Feld, Brad, Venture Deals and his related blog http://www.askthevc.com/. Further reading on angel investing, incubators and accelerators: Accelerators vs.

Intertwingled: Information Changes Everything
by Peter Morville
Published 14 May 2014

ix Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows (2008), p.14. x Meadows (2008), p.157. xi Meadows (2008), p.5. xii The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs (1961), p.376. xiii Jacobs (1961), p.376. xiv The Agile Manifesto, http://agilemanifesto.org. xv The Machine That Changed the World by James Womack (1990), p.56. xvi The Lean Startup by Eric Ries (2011). xvii Meadows (2008), p.170. xviii Should Isle Royale Wolves Be Reintroduced by John Vucetich (2012), p.130. xix The Perfect Mile by Neal Bascomb (2005). xx Philosophy of the Buddha by Christopher W. Gowans (2003), p.29. xxi Mindfulness in Plain English by Bhante Gunaratana (2011), p.151.

We Are the Nerds: The Birth and Tumultuous Life of Reddit, the Internet's Culture Laboratory
by Christine Lagorio-Chafkin
Published 1 Oct 2018

That abrasive hue would become YC’s signature color, the color of many cups and plates and the Eames shell chairs in the YC kitchen, and the orange-red that PG often chose for his standard dress of polo shirt. What was left when Graham removed from startup funding all the things he disliked was very close to the concept that was becoming known as “the lean startup.” It entails using existing technologies to iterate fast, initially ignoring certain “best practices” commonly associated with running a functional company, such as scalability, internationalization, and heavy-duty security. He advised the founders, instead of being thorough, to release early versions of their work that were lightweight enough to evolve.

…

They wanted to be inclusive of a variety of individuals’ search strategies, because the way a programmer might look for a code file on his hard drive would be very different from how an artist might find a photograph. In other words, they got caught up in building something sturdy that would scale broadly and smoothly. They never launched a product. Huffman, by contrast, was very good at following the lean-startup doctrine. Stone described Huffman’s practical approach as: “Okay, what’s the most important thing that we can do right now?” Huffman wrote to-do lists, from which he’d methodically start at the top, most important item, and work his way down. Other lists were titled “where do I spend time?” and “what is the problem I’m trying to solve?”

Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge From Small Discoveries
by Peter Sims
Published 18 Apr 2011

Agile methods are not yet mainstream. Companies like Salesforce.com have had successful migrations, while other software companies struggle to implement them. Small teams are critical, as is training and experience with the methods of which there are many variations, including Scrum, Ruby on Rails, Lean Startup, Customer Development Model, and so on. In general, Silicon Valley Internet entrepreneurs use agile methods because they can, and often must given their constraints. Creativity research on problem finding versus problem solving: Interview with Dr. R. Keith Sawyer, Washington University. The Creative Vision: A Longitudinal Study of Problem Finding in Art, by J.

The Purpose Economy: How Your Desire for Impact, Personal Growth and Community Is Changing the World
by Aaron Hurst
Published 31 Aug 2013

The Purpose Economy 2.0 In the early spring of 2013, I sat down and drafted The Purpose Economy. I shared my insights and stories from the front lines to help inspire and enable everyone to embrace, build, and own the new economy. The book was set to be published in September of the same year, but after a 15-minute conversation with Eric Ries, author of The Lean Startup, we switched gears and decided to treat the manuscript as a beta version and not as the finished book. We printed 2,000 copies and sent them to pioneers and thought leaders in the new economy. We asked them to contribute their ideas and observations about the Purpose Economy, the book, and the concept.

Remote Work Revolution: Succeeding From Anywhere
by Tsedal Neeley
Published 14 Oct 2021

It’s about what it takes to truly work together while being apart. Whether she’s writing about digital tools or the importance of social cues and context, Tsedal Neeley has created a guide that will help any organization withstand challenges and realize its full potential over the long-term.” —Eric Ries, CEO of Long-Term Stock Exchange (LTSE), author of The Lean Startup and The Startup Way “Suddenly, the business world has changed fundamentally for all of us. With remote work remaining a necessity for many industries going forward, Tsedal’s book is a must-read for any manager navigating the challenges and benefits of a virtual workforce.” —Liz Cheng, general manager of television at GBH and WORLD Channel “Whether it’s part of a long-term strategy or simply thrust upon you due to the pandemic, a remote work program requires a systematic approach to succeed.

A World of Three Zeros: The New Economics of Zero Poverty, Zero Unemployment, and Zero Carbon Emissions
by Muhammad Yunus
Published 25 Sep 2017

The organization is led by a global team of young professionals from eight countries and from many different walks of life—graduate students and consultants, journalists and graphic designers, including people who have worked for Google, McKinsey & Company, and Grameen Bank, along with Rhodes and Fulbright scholars, engineers, and poets. Their chief mission is to identify, recruit, and incubate some of the next generation of social business leaders. Young people who are selected to become Y&Y fellows are guided through a unique curriculum that teaches them lean startup principles that help them build successful social businesses that are sustainable and strategically sound. Over a six-month period, Y&Y fellows attend biweekly webinars given by business experts, connect with a global network of change-makers and professional mentors, and receive relevant content and personalized support from the Y&Y team.

Makers
by Chris Anderson
Published 1 Oct 2012

The academic way to put this is that global supply chains have become “scale-free,” able to serve the small as well as the large, the garage inventor and Samsung. The non-academic way to say it is this: nothing is stopping you from making anything. The people now control the means of production. Or, as The Lean Startup author Eric Reis puts it, Marx got it wrong: “It’s not about ownership of the means of production, anymore. It’s about rentership of the means of production.” Such open supply chains are the mirror of Web publishing and e-commerce a decade ago. The Web, from Amazon to eBay, revealed a Long Tail of demand for niche physical goods; now the democratized tools of production are enabling a Long Tail of supply, too.

Smartcuts: How Hackers, Innovators, and Icons Accelerate Success
by Shane Snow
Published 8 Sep 2014

I’m not being contrarian for the sake of it; I’m hoping to spark lateral thinking when it comes to success, indeed to show that lateral thinking is how the most successful people have always made it. In the following chapters, I’ll explain why kids shouldn’t be taught multiplication tables, where the fashionable “fail fast and fail often” mantra of the Lean Startup movement breaks down, and how momentum—not experience—is the single biggest predictor of business and personal success. I’ll debunk our common myths about mentorship and paying dues. And I’ll show why, paradoxically, it’s easier to build a huge business than a small one. Good fortune and talent are both ingredients of success, but like any recipe, they can be substituted with clever alternatives.

The Year Without Pants: Wordpress.com and the Future of Work
by Scott Berkun
Published 9 Sep 2013

—Joe Belfiore, corporate vice president, Microsoft “Most talk of the future of work is just speculation, but Berkun has actually worked there. The Year Without Pants is a brilliant, honest, and funny insider's story of life at a great company.” —Eric Ries, author, New York Times bestseller The Lean Startup “WordPress.com has discovered a better way to work, and The Year Without Pants allows the reader to learn from the organization's fun and entertaining story.” —Tony Hsieh, author, New York Times bestseller Delivering Happiness, and CEO, Zappos.com, Inc. “The Year Without Pants is a highly unusual business book, full of ideas and lessons for a business of any size, but a truly insightful and entertaining read as well.

Uncanny Valley: A Memoir
by Anna Wiener
Published 14 Jan 2020

I asked where the first blank-slate city would be, expecting him to say somewhere in California—outside of Sacramento, maybe, somewhere within commuting distance that would release some of the pressure from San Francisco. Central America, he said. Maybe El Salvador. “Somewhere with people who want to work hard, and don’t want to have to deal with crime,” he explained. I stared, with great interest, at the bottom of my beer bottle. “The idea is to follow lean-startup methodology. The city will start small, like an early startup that has to cater to the first hundred users, rather than the first million.” I asked how he planned to scale up, and regretted it as soon as he gave me the answer: shipping containers. To live in? I asked. What about community? People didn’t come from nowhere.

When More Is Not Better: Overcoming America's Obsession With Economic Efficiency
by Roger L. Martin
Published 28 Sep 2020

For this reason, policy makers need to encourage capital providers to pursue longer-term rewards from the companies in which they invest and to utilize more—and more intelligent—long-term proxies for measuring the companies’ progress. Here we can see that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has recently set a good example with its approval of the Long-Term Stock Exchange (LTSE) as the nation’s fourteenth stock exchange, in May 2019. Founded by Silicon Valley entrepreneur and best-selling author of The Lean Startup, Eric Ries, the LTSE will explicitly require companies that list on the exchange and investors that trade on it to follow practices that are oriented toward the longer term.19 While the exact listing rules had not been made public as of this writing, they hold the promise of an alternative stock market for both companies and investors who would like to think longer term.

The Middleman Economy: How Brokers, Agents, Dealers, and Everyday Matchmakers Create Value and Profit
by Marina Krakovsky
Published 14 Sep 2015

His stake in the company is now valued at tens of millions of dollars; perhaps most important, his association with Dropbox also burnished Nozad’s name as someone whom investors and entrepreneurs should take seriously, enabling him to go from angel investor to founding partner in his own VC firm, Pejman Mar Ventures, thus formalizing his middleman role between young entrepreneurs and people with funds to invest. Pejman Mar Ventures is currently housed in an airy loft in downtown Palo Alto, just a few blocks from the Medallion Rug Gallery, where Nozad began building his network. The decor inside—spare, hip, and modern, with no Persian rug in sight—perfectly matches the youthful “lean start-up” set to which the firm caters. In some ways, of course, Pejman Mar is just like any venture capital firm, pooling money from investors, called limited partners, and divvying it up among the start-up companies in its portfolio. When a portfolio company does well, going public or getting acquired for a large sum, the venture firm and its LPs share in the profits.

Technical Blogging: Turn Your Expertise Into a Remarkable Online Presence
by Antonio Cangiano
Published 15 Mar 2012

They blog because they feel so strongly about their ideas that they want to convince others to believe in the same principles, with the ultimate goal of improving the field they work in. Steve Yegge is one example of such a blogger (http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com). You’ll find other examples if you search for blogs dedicated to methodologies, such as Agile development or Lean startups. Communication and well-defined ideas are at the heart of most professions. So if you are a programmer, blogging really stands to make you a better programmer. If you are a CEO, blogging can make you a better businessperson. Focus your writing on what you want to improve upon and not just on what you know best.

Simple Rules: How to Thrive in a Complex World
by Donald Sull and Kathleen M. Eisenhardt
Published 20 Apr 2015

Annie Case diligently researched simple rules for crowdfunding at Indiegogo and Kickstarter, while Lauryn Isford and Florence Koskas clarified how simple rules work in shared-economy companies. Luke Pappas provided revealing baseball insights. Although their material did not make the final version of the book, Kathy appreciates the terrific efforts of Andrea Sy on Wikipedia and Michael Heinrich on the Lean Startup. Their work will shine somewhere—soon. Finally, successive cohorts of master’s students in Kathy’s course, Strategy in Technology-based Companies (MS&E 270), challenged and immeasurably sharpened the conceptual foundation of simple rules. For Kathy, the book could not have happened without the help of family members, friends, and colleagues.

Blitzscaling: The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies
by Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh
Published 14 Apr 2018

For example, Charles Schwab was able to build his eponymous financial empire by leveraging the deregulation of brokerage commissions to launch a discount brokerage. Frequently, you won’t be able to fully validate product/market fit before you commit to building a company. But you should try. As authors and entrepreneurs, we’re huge fans of Eric Ries and his lean start-up methodology. It is an excellent process for systematically tackling risk. But the fact is that most start-ups don’t follow that process; instead, their chosen experiment is “Do we succeed or run out of money?” The best way for a small, resource-strapped team to assess potential strategies is to leverage what we dubbed “network intelligence” in our previous book, The Alliance.

Live Work Work Work Die: A Journey Into the Savage Heart of Silicon Valley
by Corey Pein
Published 23 Apr 2018

He said he had previously cofounded “a company for value added services for the mobile industry,” whatever that meant, only to fall in with “a bad person” who suckered him into some fraudulent scheme. “That evil person stole 3 million dollars from me, that I earned during my whole lifetime,” Aron wrote. After the sob story, he got back to business. What is the budget that you think that is appropriate for this lean startup, bearing in mind that the professional force will be rewarded mostly with options/stocks in the company? Aha! Here was a sign that Aron had some real experience running a tech company: He didn’t want to pay his workers. I knew that greedy people were the easiest to scam. I wondered how Aron had lost $3 million.

The Business of Platforms: Strategy in the Age of Digital Competition, Innovation, and Power
by Michael A. Cusumano , Annabelle Gawer and David B. Yoffie
Published 6 May 2019

But when traditional barriers to entry are low, even in markets where companies feel protected because of their strong network effects, new entrants can still enter the business on the supply side and fragment the user base, preventing a market from tipping toward one big winner. The unique dilemma for many platform businesses is that the initial cost of market entry can be very low because of advances in digital technology, which we will discuss in more detail below. In the world of lean start-ups, the amount of capital required to develop, produce, and distribute a new product or service, or even a new platform, is a fraction of what it cost ten or twenty years ago. In the gig economy, it has been especially easy to start new transaction platforms like handyman services (e.g., Handy or TaskRabbit).

Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble
by Dan Lyons
Published 4 Apr 2016

Suddenly there was a new business model: Grow fast, lose money, go public. That model persists today. It’s a simple racket. Venture capitalists pump millions of dollars into a company. The company spends some of that money coding up a “minimum viable product,” or MVP, a term coined by Eric Ries, author of The Lean Startup, which has become a bible for new tech companies, and then pumps enormous sums into acquiring customers—by hiring sales reps, marketers, and public relations people who can get publicity, put on flashy conferences, and generate hype—brand and buzz, as HubSpot calls it. The losses pile up, but the revenue number rises.

Peers Inc: How People and Platforms Are Inventing the Collaborative Economy and Reinventing Capitalism
by Robin Chase
Published 14 May 2015

Despite dozens of earnest ridesharing start-up attempts in the United States, none have succeeded (although I believe in time, demand will come around in the United States). The moral? If there isn’t demand for what you are creating, nothing I have to say in this chapter will help. Steve Blank, a serial entrepreneur who began the Lean Startup movement, captured our experience succinctly in a blog post titled “No Plan Survives First Contact with Customers.”3 GoLoco’s stumbling effort, with its back-and-forth interplay between founder vision and real-world experience, accurately depicts the importance of the “kernel,” the first phase of experimentation.

The Man Who Broke Capitalism: How Jack Welch Gutted the Heartland and Crushed the Soul of Corporate America—and How to Undo His Legacy
by David Gelles
Published 30 May 2022

And then it can be a $1 trillion company. But you’re not going to get your quarterly returns for the next five years. Do you want to do that?” The alternative, he explained, was a slow march to irrelevancy. “The answer was always like, ‘No. We want our dividend,’ ” Dignan said. Eric Ries, a consultant and author of The Lean Startup, was also brought in to work with Immelt and his team. Ries, an expert in entrepreneurial culture, was there to try to jump-start innovation inside the company. That meant trying new things, being willing to fail, and possibly investing in technologies that might not immediately pay off. Inside GE, however, Ries found a deep-seated aversion to risk taking.

Bold: How to Go Big, Create Wealth and Impact the World
by Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler
Published 3 Feb 2015

This is possible, in part, because the structure of exponential organizations is very different. Rather than utilize armies of employees or large physical plants, twenty-first-century start-ups are smaller organizations focused on information technologies, dematerializing the once physical and creating new products and revenue streams in months, sometimes weeks. As a result, these lean start-ups are the small furry mammals competing with the large dinosaurs—meaning they’re one asteroid strike away from world dominance. Exponential technology is that asteroid. In times of dramatic change, the large and slow cannot compete with the small and nimble. But being small and nimble requires a whole lot more than just understanding the Six Ds of exponentials and their expanding scale of impact.

How to Turn Down a Billion Dollars: The Snapchat Story
by Billy Gallagher
Published 13 Feb 2018

Live From New York: The Complete, Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live as Told by Its Stars, Writers, and Guests. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2016. Moritz. Michael. Return to the Little Kingdom: How Apple and Steve Jobs Changed the World. New York: Overlook Press, 2009. Reis, Eric. The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses. New York: Crown Business, 2011. Roose, Kevin. Young Money: Inside the Hidden World of Wall Street’s Post-Crash Recruits. New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2014. Rose, Todd. The End of Average: How We Succeed in a World That Values Sameness.

Secrets of Sand Hill Road: Venture Capital and How to Get It
by Scott Kupor
Published 3 Jun 2019

Given the chance, any one of those ideas could well become a reality that changes the way we live, and those are ideas we need to support. I believe Scott’s book is destined to change the equation when it comes to who gets funded. It’s leading us into a fairer, more robust future, and I can’t think of a wiser person to take us there. Eric Ries, author of The Lean Startup and The Startup Way Introduction I am writing this book from my office on Sand Hill Road, the hallowed Silicon Valley street that holds as much promise for entrepreneurs as Hollywood Boulevard does for actors, Wall Street does for investment bankers, and Music Row does for country music artists.

European Founders at Work
by Pedro Gairifo Santos
Published 7 Nov 2011

More people do like creating their own company. We have now eight, nine years of good funding opportunities, probably more like eight. We're going to see [if] the financial crisis we have currently has an impact on entrepreneurship or not, or on financing or not. Then it changed that you can actually start with a lean start-up. There is no need to buy big expensive hardware or software like databases. Everything that you need today is free or close to free. In the end, you only need the manpower. To get the best people, you have to attract them with more than money. I think starting, co-starting, or helping entrepreneur software developers to start their companies, I would say that this is really a challenging, new approach.

The Boy Who Could Change the World: The Writings of Aaron Swartz
by Aaron Swartz and Lawrence Lessig
Published 5 Jan 2016

This book (really an excerpt from his forthcoming book) is so very, very good that it just blows me away. Issenberg tells the tale of everything I’ve been trying to say to everyone in politics, but he does it in a real-life three-act morality play that’s so good it could be a model on how to tell a story. The Lean Startup by Eric Ries Ries presents a translation of the Toyota Production System to start-ups—and it’s so clearly the right way to run a start-up that it’s hard to imagine how we got along before it. Unfortunately, the book has become so trendy that I find many people claiming to swear allegiance to it who clearly missed the point entirely.

The Idealist: Aaron Swartz and the Rise of Free Culture on the Internet
by Justin Peters
Published 11 Feb 2013

91 You mess with the bull, you get the horns. 9 THE WEB IS YOURS At the beginning of every year, Aaron Swartz would post to his blog an annotated list of the books he had read over the previous twelve months.1 His list for 2011 included seventy books, twelve of which he identified as “so great my heart leaps at the chance to tell you about them even now.”2 The list illustrated the depth and breadth of Swartz’s interests. There was CODE: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software, by Charles Petzold (“I never really felt like I understood the computer until I read this book”); The Lean Startup, by Eric Ries (“Read it with an open mind and let it challenge you, so you can start to understand how transformative it really is”); The Pale King, an unfinished posthumous novel by David Foster Wallace, Swartz’s favorite fiction writer (“Probably less unfinished than it feels”). The list also included Franz Kafka’s The Trial, about a man caught in the cogs of a vast judicial bureaucracy, facing charges and a system that defied logical explanation.

System Error: Where Big Tech Went Wrong and How We Can Reboot
by Rob Reich , Mehran Sahami and Jeremy M. Weinstein
Published 6 Sep 2021

Y Combinator—YC for short—is often referred to as a start-up “accelerator” as it not only invests in very young companies but helps to bring together small groups of entrepreneurs in “batches” to create such ventures and mentors them through the process of securing additional investment. Its standard deal is to invest $125,000 in return for 7 percent of a company, leveraging the fact that infrastructure costs for internet companies have plummeted in recent years. YC fosters a “lean start-up” mentality, where there is a push to build a minimal viable product, get it out to potential users to find out what resonates, and then iterate quickly to try new possibilities if early ideas fail to get traction. In essence, it’s applying an optimization process to find product ideas and features that consumers would consider using.

The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win
by Gene Kim , Kevin Behr and George Spafford
Published 14 Jul 2013

“So, we now know that Allspaw and Hammond weren’t so crazy after all. Jez Humble and Dave Farley independently came to the same conclusions, and then codified the practices and principles that enable multiple deployments per day in their seminal book Continuous Delivery. Eric Ries then showed us how this capability can help the business learn and win in his Lean Startup work.” As Erik talks, he is as animated as I’ve ever seen him. Shaking his head, he looks sternly at me. “Your next step should be obvious by now, grasshopper. In order for you to keep up with customer demand, which includes your upstream comrades in Development,” he says, “you need to create what Humble and Farley called a deployment pipeline.

On the Clock: What Low-Wage Work Did to Me and How It Drives America Insane
by Emily Guendelsberger
Published 15 Jul 2019

Jones The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling, Arlie Hochschild Blood, Sweat & Tears: The Evolution of Work, Richard Donkin False Prophets: The Gurus Who Created Modern Management and Why Their Ideas Are Bad for Business, James Hoopes The Second Shift: Working Families and the Revolution at Home, Arlie Hochschild Reengineering the Corporation: A Manifesto for Business Revolution, Michael Hammer and James Champy Just Enough Anxiety: The Hidden Driver of Business Success, Robert H. Rosen The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses, Eric Ries Gigged: The End of the Job and the Future of Work, Sarah Kessler The Job: Work and Its Future in a Time of Radical Change, Ellen Ruppel Shell On low-wage work and workers The Working Poor: Invisible in America, David K.

Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Being Productive in Life and Business
by Charles Duhigg
Published 8 Mar 2016

It documents the FBI’s work products and is used in conjunction with information we collect or access through other partnerships in order to further data.” “agile programming” The words “lean” and “agile” have come to mean different things in different settings. There is, for example, lean product development, lean start-ups, agile management, and agile construction. Some of these definitions or methodologies are very specific. In this chapter, I generally use the phrases in their most global sense. However, for more detailed explanations of the various implementations of these philosophies, I recommend Rachna Shah and Peter T.

That Used to Be Us
by Thomas L. Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum
Published 1 Sep 2011

Two Israelis, Shai Policker, a medical engineer, and Dr. Edy Soffer, a prominent gastroenterologist, joined a Seattle-based engineering team (led by an Australian) to help with the design. A company in Uruguay specializing in pacemakers built the prototype. This is the latest in venture investing: a lean start-up whose principals are rarely in the same place at the same time and which takes advantage of all the tools of the connected world—teleconferencing, e-mail, the Internet, Facebook, Twitter, and faxes—to make use of the best expertise and low-cost, high-quality manufacturing. We’ve described cloud computing.

Blockchain Revolution: How the Technology Behind Bitcoin Is Changing Money, Business, and the World
by Don Tapscott and Alex Tapscott
Published 9 May 2016

We’re beginning the next major phase of the digital revolution. Michelle Tinsley of Intel explained why her company is deeply investigating the blockchain revolution: “When PCs became pervasive, the productivity rates went through the roof. We connected those PCs to a server, a data center, or the cloud, making it really cheap and easy for lean start-ups to get computer power at their fingertips, and we’re again seeing rapid innovation, new business models.”18 Intel wants to accelerate the process of understanding what’s working, what’s not working, and where the opportunities lie. “We could see this technology be a whole other step function of innovation, where it enables all sorts of new companies, new players.

Essential Scrum: A Practical Guide to the Most Popular Agile Process
by Kenneth S. Rubin
Published 19 Jul 2012

Cutter Information Corp. Reinertsen, Donald G. 2009a. “Types of Processes.” Guest blog entry found at www.netobjectives.com/blogs/Types-of-Processes. Reinertsen, Donald G. 2009b. The Principles of Product Development Flow: Second Generation Lean Product Development. Celeritas Publishing. Ries, Eric. 2011. The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses. Crown Business. Schwaber, Ken. 1995. “Scrum Development Process.” In OOPSLA Business Object Design and Implementation Workshop, ed. J. Sutherland et al. Springer. Schwaber, Ken. 2004. Agile Software Development with Scrum.

WTF?: What's the Future and Why It's Up to Us
by Tim O'Reilly
Published 9 Oct 2017

From the very first day a company is funded by venture capitalists, or launches without funding, its success is dependent on achieving key metrics such as user adoption, usage, or engagement. Because the service is online, this feedback comes in near-real time. In the language of Eric Ries’s popular Lean Startup methodology, the first version is referred to as “minimum viable product (MVP),” defined as “that version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort.” The goal of every entrepreneur is to grow that MVP incrementally till it finds “product-market fit,” resulting in explosive growth.

Future Crimes: Everything Is Connected, Everyone Is Vulnerable and What We Can Do About It
by Marc Goodman
Published 24 Feb 2015

In other words, with sufficient mule and HR capacity, losses attributable to cyber crime could be ten thousand times worse. The Lean (Criminal) Start-Up The structure of Crime, Inc., like that of any modern techno-centric organization, is not fixed in time and space but rather constantly in flux. In his book The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses, Eric Ries outlines methods by which budding entrepreneurs can create new products “under conditions of extreme uncertainty.” For criminals, uncertainty is where they excel, never knowing when the next police raid or rival gang drive-by shooting will take place.

Inventor of the Future: The Visionary Life of Buckminster Fuller
by Alec Nevala-Lee
Published 1 Aug 2022

Ultimately, the dome was less innovative as a structure than as the organizing principle that Fuller had sought since Wichita. In the privately circulated essay “Universal Requirements for a Dwelling Advantage,” in which he revised a list of the basic functions of shelter that he had been updating for two decades, he furnished an entire manual for a lean start-up. An invention, Fuller wrote, began with one person, whom he advised to keep a detailed journal, while the next stage called for associates to build models and study production curves. He described his hypothetical company all the way to public relations, which was guided by rules that he would follow only erratically: RULE I: NEVER SHOW HALF-FINISHED WORK.

Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World
by Malcolm Harris
Published 14 Feb 2023

Speed Bumps Despite how they appear to us now, at first it was hard to understand the rise of the scraper advertising and crab platforms politically. The world’s turbulent 1990s left political narratives scrambled, and capital’s orthogonal attack on labor caught the United States by surprise. Surely big multinational employers weren’t worth defending against lean start-ups, especially when, thanks to burning piles of investor cash, the latter offered easy user experiences, lower prices, and incentives for contractors. Walmart, Clear Channel, Bechtel, Exxon, Goldman Sachs, and Starbucks were the evil corporations, not Amazon, Apple, Google, Twitter, and Facebook.