Source - https://hbr.org/2013/05/why-the-lean-start-up-changes-everything

TL;DR - The lean startup principles serve as a guide for founders to increase the efficiency of their business decisions.

Helpfulness - 5

Tags - lean startup, customer development, hypotheses, agile development,

Questions answered:

• What are the lean startup principles?
• Why was the lean startup methodology developed?

Summary:

• Research by HBS shows that 75% of startups fail.
• The methodology known as “lean startup” allegedly makes the process of starting a company less risky.
• Lean startup favors experimentation over elaborate planning, customer feedback over intuition, and iterative design over traditional “big design up front” development.
• Its principles include failing fast and continually learning.
• Business plans and forecasts require a lot of assumptions that don’t hold up upon contact with customers.
• Startups that succeed fail quickly and often, and adapt.
• Lean definition of a start-up: a temporary organization designed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model.
• Three principles:
  • Before committing to months of research/planning, founders compile their hypothesis in a business model canvas.
  • Customer development: rapidly develop MVPs and quickly get customer feedback; repeat process with new data.
  • Agile development: develop product iteratively and incrementally to prevent wasted time.
• Methodology values customer feedback over secrecy.
• Open source software (GitHub) and cloud technology (AWS) have dramatically reduced software development costs.
• Widespread adoption of lean startup principles could have a notable effect on overall efficiency, and impact GDP and employment.