Book Review: The Lean Startup
(by Eric Ries, Instaread edition)
Firstly, I recommend “Instaread”, “blinkist” and similar companies for those of us with too many interesting books to read, and not sufficient time, nor the patience (?) to grind through the full and lengthy editions. Instead, let us quick and dirty conclude the 20/80 concept is provided by the companies mentioned above. Meaning, you as a reader get to understand 80% of the book’s concept by spending 20% of the time it would take you to read the full edition of the book.
This review is written without prior knowledge to the contents of the full and original edition of the Lean Startup, and how that edition possibly contains some of the features I comment under the section “What could be improved in this book”. The focus in its entirety is the principles/theories of Lean Startup and not the possible downsides to a reader for the publishing house’s business model of providing extracts of books.
SUMMARY
Ries presents 10 principles that should be the aim and guidelines for both entrepeneurs in stand-alone startups, as they should as well adhere to intrapeneurs (“inhouse” entrepeneurs in incumbent organisations).
The 10 principles in my opinion can be aggregated to not more than 3 basic considerations for a startup (company or project), summoned up in this sentence:
- …You get to know the marketplace and your customers’ JOBS/PAINS/GAINS by “getting out of your building” and interact with users,
- …Your subsequent Value proposition (product/services/business model) to customers are quickly, frequently and cheaply improved through a Build-Measure-Learn cycle, where customers’ feedback from your prototyped products/services are incorporated into the next version,
- …You will not let vanity get in the way of pivoting away from your current Value Proposition, if competitor- and market intel along with customer-centric feedback signals your product/service/business model no longer will be financially viable
WHAT TO LIKE ABOUT THIS BOOK
Ries assumes the “customer obsessive” approach for Value Proposition, both to align with customer as well as minimizing the costs and time it takes to bring a (sought after) product to the market place.
He further mentions two useful techniques in order to bring the down the time and costs for bringing down a product’s development costs and reducing time-to-market; Prototyping and MVP (Minimum Viable Product).
WHAT COULD BE IMPROVED IN THIS BOOK
A prerequisite for the reader of this book is a) the knowledge of practical tools for the Customer-Centric approach. These techniques are, however not elaborated in the book. (Fear not! Many other publications providing Customer-Centric Tools & Techniques are out there, check out this Book Review, or 101 Design Methods).