The business and marketing functions of a startup should be considered as important as engineering and product development

Customer Development Methodology

The application of lean thinking to the process of innovation. It is a new way of looking at development of innovative new products that emphasizes fast iteration and customer insight, huge vision, and great ambition.

Lean Startup

Use scientific experimentation to discover how to build a sustainable business

Validated learning

Comprehensive theory of entrepreneurship should adress all the functions of an early-stage venture:<ul><li>Vision and concept</li><li>Product development</li><li>Marketing and sales</li><li>Scaling up</li><li>Partnerships and distribution</li><li>Structure and organizational design</li><li>Method for measuring progress in extreme uncertainty</li><li>Clear guidance on how to make trade-off decisions and whether or when to invest in process</li><li>Formulating, planning, and creating infrastructure</li><li>When to respond to feedback and when to stick with vision</li><li>How and when to invest in scaling the business</li></ul>

Early-stage Venture

<ul><li>Build cross-functional team rather than strict functional departments</li><li>Measure productivity differently</li></ul>

Unconventional Recommendations

Outlines a revisionist approach to management while arguing against common perceptions about the inevitability of startup failures, explaining the importance of providing genuinely needed products and services as well as organizing a business that can adapt to continuous customer feedback.

books

Books

Most startups fail. But many of those failures are preventable. The Lean Startup is a new approach being adopted across the globe, changing the way companies are built and new products are launched. Eric Ries defines a startup as an organization dedicated to creating something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty. This is just as true for one person in a garage or a group of seasoned professionals in a Fortune 500 boardroom. What they have in common is a mission to penetrate that fog of uncertainty to discover a successful path to a sustainable business. The Lean Startup approach fosters companies that are both more capital efficient and that leverage human creativity more effectively. Inspired by lessons from lean manufacturing, it relies on “validated learning,” rapid scientific experimentation, as well as a number of counter-intuitive practices that shorten product development cycles, measure actual progress without resorting to vanity metrics, and learn what customers really want. It enables a company to shift directions with agility, altering plans inch by inch, minute by minute. Rather than wasting time creating elaborate business plans, The Lean Startup offers entrepreneurs—in companies of all sizes—a way to test their vision continuously, to adapt and adjust before it’s too late. Ries provides a scientific approach to creating and managing successful startups in a age when companies need to innovate more than ever.

Eric Ries is an American entrepreneur, blogger, and author of The Lean Startup, a book on the lean startup movement. He is also the author of The Startup Way, a book on modern entrepreneurial management.

Unconventional Recommendations

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