🚀 The Lean Startup

A startup is a human institution designed to create a new product or service under conditions of extreme uncertainty

Start by driving a car, not launching a rocket. Don't over assume. Avoid complex plans based on assumptions and make continuous adjustments.

Build-Measure-Learn cycle

Vision → Strategy (pivot) → Product (optimization)

Learn what customers really want (not what they say they want or what we think they want).

Learn by validation, backed by empirical data collected from real customers.

Adjust your strategy based on validated learning. The faster you learn (by minimizing effort to get there) the more productive you can be.

Productivity = validated learning / efforts

Systematically figure out things to build. If you cannot fail, you cannot learn.

Observe real behavior, don't ask hypothetical questions. Don't ask for opinions, do experiments, then review feedback.

Figure out if people want what you're offering before you build it properly.

Optimize for full path through product development and, not speed through individual segments.

An MVP lets you start the process of learning as quickly as possible → fastest way through the BML loop → test fundamental business hypothesis.

Evaluate with real people, not just yourself.

You cannot be sure you understand any part of any business problem unless you go and see for yourself first hand. It is unacceptable to take anything for granted or to rely on the reports of others.

The Customer Archetype is a hypothesis, not a fact. The customer profile should be considered provisional until the strategy has shown via validated learning that we can serve this type of customer in a sustainable way.

Early adopters use their imagination to fill in what a product is missing.

**For building an MVP → When in doubt, simplify. **

Any additional work beyond what was required to start learning is a waste, no matter how important it might have seemed at the time.

Do the things that don't scale. Be inefficient. Maximize learning, not performance!

A concierge MVP is the best approach to get to know your customers and validate your business idea. In this you provide the service manually and analyze your audience, this type of MVP allows you to pivot easily if you find out that customers actually want a different product.

As a startup, first you should learn what exactly you're building and who your customer even is. This is done with one or more inefficient, low quality, MVPs that are optimized for highest learning. You're testing a hypothesis.

If you don't know who your customer is, you don't know what quality is.

The only way to win in the startup world is to learn faster than anyone else.