How can you use a lean startup approach to succeed in entrepreneurship?

It’s really about understanding that “perfection” or a really solid product takes time to build. During that process, ensure there are real customers and clients getting experience with it and giving real feedback. I see it with marketing documents, content, product, sales, and every corner of business where the action to put it in front of a customer is underutilized because there will always be more work or improvements to do. In the end, the customer should be the ones providing valuable information, not only our team members. Putting the customer at the center involves their early feedback and guidance. Best of luck out there!

The core principle of a lean startup is the Build-Measure-Learn loop, where you build a minimum viable product (MVP), measure its performance using relevant metrics, and learn from the data to make informed decisions for future iterations.

In my experience working with founders, the ones who succeed in bringing their product to market are those that take time to validate their idea and their market with a constant feedback loop. By embracing a "build-measure-learn" feedback loop, entrepreneurs can efficiently pivot or persevere, make data-driven decisions, and optimize their resources for maximum impact, increasing their chances of success in entrepreneurship.

Infusing a startup mindset into a family-run business can create a potent blend of agility, innovation, and tradition. Embrace change and disruption by leveraging new technologies and adapting to market trends, even if they lie outside your traditional ways of operating. Cultivate a culture of innovation where new ideas are welcomed and learning from failures is celebrated. Streamline your processes with lean principles to deliver maximum value to your customers efficiently. Encourage collaboration across your organization, breaking down silos to foster holistic decision-making. Prioritize a customer-centric approach by deeply understanding your customer's needs and aligning your business strategies accordingly.

In my experience, startups that truly put customers or clients at the center of their innovation experimentation and learning loops are those with the greatest chance of ultimate success. Many startups claim to be customer-centric, but they make far too many assumptions about what customers need or want and jump to building solutions too soon. Failure to create an iterative approach to gauging customer excitement as you develop your product or service leads to poor outcomes with a lot of wasted time, money, and resources on creating things people don't really need or want.

3 question checklist for validating your assumptions - is your sample set representative of your true audience (ie no sampling or selection bias) - are you using too many related assumptions? (Can lead to multicollinearity; try to boil them down to one) - are you being completely impartial as a social scientist (ie not giving way to any sort of confirmation bias in your experiment results)

The best way to validate your assumptions is to conduct problem, solution and market research survey. You can do that by: - Interviewing your target audience - Conducting Surveys These 2 methods are best when it comes to validation

David Bland has written an informative book called "Testing Business Ideas" in which he describes 44 experiments to try. I usually have my clients start with: (1) problem discovery interviews, (2) solution discovery interviews, (3) surveys, and (4) landing pages. Clients spend less time and money by testing before launching.

Okay, you've got ideas. That's great! But are they the right ideas? Validate, don't speculate. Talk to customers, not just yourself. Test your hypothesis in the real world. Conduct surveys, build prototypes, and observe behaviors. Use real data, not gut feelings. Validate your assumptions with cold, hard facts. When facts speak, assumptions must bow.

Embrace a data-driven approach by implementing analytics and tracking mechanisms within your MVP, allowing you to gather valuable insights on user behavior, engagement, and usage patterns.

I prefer to encourage innovation teams to build a "minimum viable prototype" even before a "minimum viable product." I define "prototype" as anything you can put in front of customers to gauge their reactions and gather input/feedback. Sometimes this can be as simple as a concept description of the benefits and/or drawing illustrating the experience. Starting with very low-cost ways to communicate the experience you are striving to create for customers will allow you test hypotheses and learn fast/cheaply. This helps avoid wasting time or money on taking a bad idea forward.

MVP or minimum viable product is that crappy version of your product that is solving a major issue at hand. To put it to perspective, if you are selling paper and the person next to you catches fire on their hair then they will buy anything that solves their problem. Also if the quality of MVP is inversely proportional to the seriousness of the problem you are solving. For a bigger problem you can manage with a crappy MVP but for a simple problem your MVP has to be better.

The MVP isn’t just about rapid product development; it’s a mindset. Too many startups get caught in the ‘feature trap’, adding bells and whistles before truly understanding what their audience values. As someone entrenched in the digital business realm, I’ve seen that the most successful products often start as bare-bones MVPs. They evolve not through assumption, but through real, tangible feedback loops. So, for those embarking on their entrepreneurial journey: think lean, iterate quickly, and always prioritize value over volume.

An MVP isn't a half-baked product: it's intentional simplicity. It's your idea distilled to its essence. What's the core feature? What's the unique value? Build that. Test that. Learn from that. Your MVP is a learning tool, a way to engage with customers early and often. It's a stepping stone, not a finished monument.

In my experience, focusing on relevant metrics ensures you track the right indicators directly impacting your goals with your Lean startup. These metrics should align with your strategic objectives and provide insights into your progress. Additionally, actionable metrics help you identify areas for optimization and guide your decision-making process and innovation. Attainability also plays a vital role in effective measurement. Setting realistic targets and milestones enables you to gauge your progress accurately and make necessary adjustments. Setting achievable goals fosters a culture of continuous improvement and maintains motivation among your team members.

The following metrics help you to measure your results: - NPS Score (Net Promoter Score) - Retention Percentage - Referral Percentage - Monthly Active Users - Churn Rate - MoM (Month over Month growth)

"What gets measured, gets managed". Use metrics that matter. Vanity numbers feel good; actionable data does good. Focus on what drives growth, retention, engagement. Measure customer behaviors, not just clicks and likes. Analyze patterns, detect problems, and uncover opportunities. Be data-driven, but don't be data-blinded. Numbers tell a story; make sure you read it right.

Key to these pivot or not decisions are benchmarks/goal metrics. Creating values by what metric and what counts as good enough at your stage? Talk to non-competing peers in your industry to learn what good traction looks like.

Having advised numerous businesses in the digital space, I’ve observed that one of the most common pitfalls post-MVP is tracking every metric under the sun. Instead, it’s essential to focus on a core set of KPIs that align directly with your business objectives. For instance, if you’re in the SaaS world, Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) might be a primary metric. Yet, diving deeper into metrics like Customer Lifetime Value or Average Revenue Per User can provide richer insights. It’s all about clarity of purpose when it comes to metrics: understand what truly drives value for your users and business.

Pivot or persevere, the entrepreneur's dance: "If it's working, double down. If it's not, turn around!" But how to know though? Listen to the market. Is the customer engaged? Is traction building? If yes, persevere. If not, pivot. It's a decision of head, not heart. It's a decision of growth, not comfort.

Continuously gather and analyze customer feedback to identify pain points and areas for improvement. Use this valuable insight to enhance your product or service, ensuring it remains aligned with the evolving needs and expectations of your customers. The customers matter.

Scaling is always followed after hitting PMF. PMF can be reached if you have: - NPS of greater than 40% - Good Retention Percentage - Good Referral Percentage When you hit PMF then it means your product and business model works in a specific area (maybe a city or state). Now you need to create an automated process that can be implemented anywhere at scale. The prerequisite to it are: - PMF - Problem at Scale - Target Audience at Scale - Capital - Good Management

SCALE & GROWTH are NOT interchangeable terms. Growth is linear—i.e., taking on more clients, products, sales, staff etc. compared to a past point in time. If a business grows revenue by increasing operating cost at the same rate or higher, it can’t sustain profitability. Whereas a business that can grow revenue and increase client volumes significantly while keeping operating costs the same or minimally higher while maintaining or improving product quality, client service and support levels and profit margins scales well. Scaling too early/too fast can do irreparable harm to your business; rapid growth in a business that doesn’t scale can end it altogether!

Keep in mind that Lean Startup was written for and works best for high growth, technology based startups that are often funded by venture capital. More than 99% of new businesses started each year in the US are not this type of business. However, the basic principles of talking to customers, iterating quickly, and designing an MVP still apply to most new businesses.