The Lean Startup
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david &
The Lean Startup by Eric Ries

Edition
ISBN 9780670921607

Reviews

Photo of Danielle Rose
Danielle Rose@dancaban
4 stars
May 9, 2024

Good for dev/tech orgs. Basic principle is to test things before going too far into assumptions

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Julian Paul@julianpaul
5 stars
Jan 26, 2024

A must read for any founder.

+2
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Craig Jellick@craigjellick
5 stars
Jan 15, 2024

Great way of framing work with lots of actionable tactics. Good if you’re at a startup or just want to be more entrepreneurial at any organization.

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Nast Marrero@nast
4 stars
Feb 1, 2023

This book compiles many of the principles that I understand as key to modern management's evolution. It takes most of its ideas and concepts from Agile and Lean and rebrand them in a great marketinian way. This book has made mainstream many principles that will drive change towards better organizations and decissions both in society and business. Since it compiles a collage of resources excepted from the vast Agile and Lean literature, it is somewhat poor on its instructions about how to implement the practices it advocates.

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Obada Mu@obada
5 stars
Jan 18, 2023

“Success is not delivering a feature; success is learning how to solve the customer’s problem “ Cook

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JM Benedetto@jmbenedetto
5 stars
Jan 16, 2023

A clear and well define method to improve inovation effectiveness. A must to read for any innovator.

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Felipe Saldarriaga @felipesaldata
5 stars
Jan 3, 2023

Por fin he podido darme la oportunidad de leer al gran recomendado y referente para quienes nos inspira la ruta de crear startups y seguir de cerca cómo se desarrollan. Cumple con todas mis expectativas y particularmente, como ingeniero industrial, el ver como se implementa la filosofía Lean en este punto me resulta supremamente interesante facil de asociar a mis posibilidades.

Photo of Hatem Abdelmowgoud
Hatem Abdelmowgoud @iammowgoud
5 stars
Aug 31, 2022

The Lean Startup movement is based on the Lean Industry where the product or the service is built and shaped according to customers demands. It’s all about how you cut on wasting time and effort building products you like (or think you like) and start on building what the customer really wants. The book insists on the concept of experimenting your guesses. Basically, your work will be entirely a series of build-test-feedback loops. This may involve proving most of your primary guesses wrong through the process. You may wind up creating a product or providing a service which is completely different from your initial product or service. Eric explains that his Lean ideas aren’t the opposite of organised management, but rather it’s a new style of management which doesn’t really focus on a hierarchical structure as much as it focuses on promoting creativity and producing the right product. The book approaches each concept by defining it, it’s origin, then it goes on how to implement the idea. The best thing about this book is how it provides you with a lot of case studies relevant to each concept written in a very interesting and direct way. Actually, those case studies are the only thing that convinced me with Eric’s ideas. What I really liked about the book is that it doesn’t revolve around motivational speech and cliche statements. Unlike many entrepreneurship books, it cuts to the chase and provide you with a teachable know-how of the processes you will encounter everyday while starting a company. However, through reading the book, sometimes I felt that there’s a little bit of repetition, the author kept on repeating some ideas over and over. Anyway, maybe that’s a good thing to properly communicate the ideas. I think that the Lean Startup revolutionise the way we think about management, it redefines the basic concepts of responsibility and accountability. This is why I’m not sure whether the Lean Startup model could be applied in large enterprises and established businesses or not. I don’t think when you have a 1000+ employees you can involve them in such way in the management, simply because not all of them will really “care” to participate in a highly flexible model like that. Also, most of the current top managers will fight Lean ideas anyway. However, Eric believes that the Lean Startup model is applicable to “any” business, and he actually provides some case studies which support his hypothesis. Finally, if you have the least bit of interest in starting your own business, you'll certainly like the book.

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John Elbing@palebluedot
5 stars
Aug 21, 2022

I had a "failed" entrepreneurial attempt and I am not sure why, even if I could point to number of things we should have done differently. "Validated learning" is something we could have greatly benefited from!

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Chris Raastad@craastad
5 stars
Apr 20, 2022

“We would dedicate ourselves to the creation of new institutions with a long-term mission to build sustainable value and change the world for the better. Most of all, we would stop wasting other people’s time." This is the bible of Startup renaissance of the 2010s. I came in with high expectations and they were exceeded. I thought I'd step into a masterclass on post-it notes and whiteboard lanes, build-measure-learn from customers, and basically reiterating what I think is common sense. Instead, Eric lays insights into why only 1 of the 4 companies I have worked for actually practiced innovation accounting and the night-and-day difference of results rigorous learning yields in innovative companies and teams. I really enjoyed reading this book taking careful notes at the end of every chapter. Eric picks examples from his time at IVCM (which I still have never heard about until I googled it), Toyota, Intuit, Dropbox, and a bunch of other companies. The book is outlined well with chapter titles and section headers. It ages well into 2020 and should be on every startup founders' bookshelf. Don't fall for vanity metrics, test your leap-of-faith hypotheses, and know when to persevere or pivot, reduce your batch size, adapt your organization, reduce waste, and be the most innovative you, you can be. This is the book to read to be an effective innovation manager. * The Lean Startup Method * (1) Entrepreneurs are Everywhere * (2) Entrepreneurship is Management * (3) Validated Learning * (4) Build-Measure-Learn * (5) Innovation Accounting

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Justin Ahinon@segbedji
4 stars
Mar 11, 2022

I started reading this book a little by chance after a trip I had made to a farm one weekend. A friend and I were thinking about starting a startup, and I was doing some research on the subject when I came across the book. Let's just say it demystified and clarified a lot of things for me, on various subjects. First, starting even with the definition of a startup and the fact that it strongly emphasizes the uncertain nature of the environment in which it evolves. I feel like we (much more me) are ignoring this uncertainty, so it was instructive to see this recalled several times. Beyond everything, "The Lean Startup" made me want to do it, to get started, and to contribute to the creation and progress of things I care about. Knowing me, it's a very curious desire, since I've always shied away from calling myself an entrepreneur (https://segbedji.com/i-never-thought-of-myself-as-an-entrepreneur).

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Ricardo Parro@ricardoparro
5 stars
Feb 3, 2022

Second time I read it and it's def the bible of building startups

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Nikolay Bachiyski@nb
5 stars
Nov 19, 2021

If your role contains either project or product, or you have heard the word project, this book is worth reading. Please, don't treat it as a silver bullet. Just food for thought. P.S. After reading it, I got into the habit of stating all the assumptions before starting any project. It makes a difference.

Photo of Hooman Askari
Hooman Askari@hoomanaskari
5 stars
Nov 18, 2021

Have startup? Read this book.

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Kelly Kim@kellykim
3 stars
Sep 20, 2021

An insightful thought process behind creating and leading a successful startup. For me, the word 'lean' seems synonymous to flexible as a result of light structure. Some interesting lessons on how to avoid data-interpretation pitfalls, how to correctly cultivate a sustainable team in terms of performance, morale and innovation, and most importantly, how to treat/love your startup right.

+2
Photo of Roger Dean Olden
Roger Dean Olden@rogerolden
4 stars
Sep 16, 2021

A must read for anyone working in a tech-company.

Photo of Shreerag Plakazhi
Shreerag Plakazhi@shreerag
4 stars
Sep 8, 2021

Excellent resource for new and old startups. I gained a wealth of knowledge and can't wait to begin testing it out.

Photo of Kirill So
Kirill So@kirill
3 stars
Aug 14, 2021

As many people already noted, I think this book can be a blog post. If you have already been reading a few tech-related books out there you probably know all the concepts, nevertheless for 1st-time entrepreneurs => invaluable.

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Peter Hagen@pha
5 stars
Aug 12, 2021

The central idea of the book is to treat product development as discovering what people want, not to build out your ideas. One of my favourite books of all time, it got me into entrepreneurship and valuing "doing" & iterating over everything else.

Photo of Marc Köhlbrugge
Marc Köhlbrugge@marc
4.5 stars
Aug 10, 2021

A classic every startup founder should read.

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James Bedford@james
2.5 stars
Aug 3, 2021

Was disappointed with this! It’s been on my shelf for ages because so many have recommended it to me. Just didn’t really feel as I took anything away from this at all. Everything is spoke about I already have read elsewhere, arguably more eloquently. If you are looking for a product focused book, check out Marty Cagan’s ‘Inspired’ & ‘Empowered’. They read much better.

+1
Photo of Frank Huang
Frank Huang@frankhme
4 stars
Apr 4, 2024
Photo of Dennis Bjørn Petersen
Dennis Bjørn Petersen@dennisbp
4.5 stars
Aug 3, 2023
Photo of Velen Chew
Velen Chew@velenchew
4.5 stars
Jun 26, 2023
+1

Highlights

Photo of Guillaume Gelin
Guillaume Gelin@ramnes

The goal of a startup is to figure out the right thing to build — the thing customers want and will pay for — as quickly as possible.

Photo of Piet Terheyden
Piet Terheyden@piet

In the Lean Startup model, an experiment is more than just a theoretical inquiry; it is also a first product. If this or any other experiment is successful, it allows the manager to get started with his or her campaign: enlisting early adopters, adding employees to each further experiment or iteration, and eventually starting to build a product. By the time that product is ready to be distributed widely, it will already have established customers. It will have solved real problems and offer detailed specifications for what needs to be built. Unlike a traditional strategic planning or market research process, this specification will be rooted in feedback on what is working today rather than in anticipation of what might work tomorrow.

Page 63
Photo of Piet Terheyden
Piet Terheyden@piet

She downloads the product, and then we say, "Okay, invite one of your friends to chat." And she says, No way! We say, "Why not?" And she says, "Well, I don't know if this thing is cool yet. You want me to risk inviting one of my friends? What are they going to think of me? If it sucks, they're going to think I suck, right?" And we say, "No, no, it's going to be so much fun once you get the person in there; it's a social product." She looks at us, her face filled with doubt; you can see that this is a deal breaker.

Page 44
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James Bedford@james

Genchi Gembutsu - ‘go and see for yourself.’ You cannot be sure you really understand any part of any business problem unless you go and see for yourself firsthand.

Page 86
Photo of James Bedford
James Bedford@james

Leadership requires creating conditions that enable employees to do the kinds of experimentation that entrepreneurship requires.

Page 35