“Bare Essentials – A Practical Guide to Building a Lean Startup”, was followed with an extended Q & A session. Background: The 'Lean Startup' term was popularized by entrepreneur Eric Reis on his blog “Startup Lessons Learned” and in his 2011 best selling book - ”The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses”. From last week’s talk and discussion, here are the key Lounge47 takeaways: 1) Lean Startup philosophy prescribes “experimentation over elaborate planning, customer feedback over intuition, and iterative design over traditional upfront big design” 2) Rather than develop a conventional business plan, build a business model after executing key steps - a. Develop hypotheses b. Test hypotheses by getting feedback from potential users, purchasers and partners c. Develop product “iteratively and incrementally with minimum waste of resources”, including time. Basically, Build, Measure & Learn quickly 3) Lean Startup founders discuss their ideas and seek feedback rather than operate in secrecy or “stealth mode” 4) Popular terms - MVP (Minimum Viable Product): a minimum version of product that “cuts the fat, not the essence”; Pivot (a sudden shift in strategy) affecting any and all critical moving parts of the business. The Lean Startup is more a mindset and approach – there is no recipe book and founders have to make judgment calls for their Startups. The Q&A addressed such specific issues.

1. The Bare Essentials Of
“A LEAN STARTUP”
Karthik Ramanujam

2. These are my personal opinions on the
subject and in no way represent that of
any of my past/current/future employer

3. Origin
The Lean Methodology teaches you how to drive a company - how to steer,
when to turn, and when to persevere - and grow a business with maximum
acceleration. It is a principled approach to new product development.
It is based on the principles of lean production, a manufacturing methodology
that values a business' ability to change quickly

4. So why do startups fail?
1. Building a wrong product
2. Run out of Cash?
3. Not being able to build the right team
4. Lack of unique value propositions – Get Out
Competed!
5. Pricing/ Costing issues - “Go to Market
Strategy”

5. Why do startups fail?
6. Poor Product
7. No Business Plan
8. Poor Marketing
9. Ignoring Customers
10. A Completely mis-timed product

6. ..and a whole lotta other
reasons
11. Lack of persistence
12. Disharmony on the team/investors
13. Failing to pivot/change direction
14. No mentors or advisers
15. CEO / Founder(s) unable to make decisions

7. Hang on. That's not all!
16. Out of control growth
17. Poor accounting controls
18. Not enough cash cushion
19. Operational ineptitude
20. Obscure or marginal niche

9. Now try this
Validated learning as a measure of
progress

10. The Hypothesis

11. What lean
startups do
differently?

12. You can’t argue with Validation!
Quotes:
Wait. That is an assumption. We need to validate that
Look at the board. Look at what we learned. You can't argue with validation.

13. Define it!
1. Validated learning as a measure of
progress, because it favors experimentation
over elaborate planning, customer feedback
over intuition, and iterative design over
traditional “big design up front”
development.
2. Although the methodology is just a few
years old, its concepts—such as “minimum
viable product” and “pivoting”—have quickly
taken root in the start-up world, and
business schools have already begun
adapting their curricula to teach them.

14. Must Reads
Rob Fitzpatrick