Back in 2004, Eric Ries was working on a startup called IMVU and Steve Blank was an investor and advisor for them. Steve had a methodology he called “Customer Development.” This was later released in a book called The Four Steps to the Epiphany. Eric combined Steve’s framework, the manufacturing practices of Toyota from Japan and Agile software development in what became The Lean Startup. By Benjamin Arritt.
The process of creating a plan, setting milestones and delegating tasks to employees will not work with the start up because they don’t truly know what their customers want, which approaches are best and what will be sustainable.
Eric Ries
In this summary you will find outline for the book, including:
- Vison
- Start ups need to be managed differently from established companies
- The purpose of a start up is to find a sustainable business model
- Find your sustainable business model through validated learning
- The leap of faith assumptions: test your value and growth hypothesis
- Steer
- Develop a Minimal Viable Product (MVP) to test your idea in the market
- Build, measure and learn (BML) as fast and as often as possible
- Use split-tests to optimize your product
- Vanity metrics are often flattering but misleading and do not help you find a sustainable business model
- To find the right business model for your company you usually have to pivot
- Every startup should focus on one engine of growth
- Accelerate
- Batch
- Grow
- Adapt
- Innovate
… and much more. Very useful summary for anybody trying to create their first startup!
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