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Lessons Learned: The Lean Startup Book is here
- dangrossman 15y agoI pre-ordered this from AppSumo's Lean Startup Bundle way back in October... I've been looking forward to this book for a long time!
- eries 15y agoThank you!
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- patio11 15y agoI don't generally buy business books, but I've had this one pre-ordered for forever.
- eries 15y agoThanks!
- colson04 15y agoI've also had mine pre-ordered for several months now - looking forward to it! Will there be an epub format to download to my nook?
- eries 15y agoYou'll have to order the ebook version separately. You can pre-order it on Kindle right now.
- acangiano 15y agoWill AppSumo customers receive their copy via email, Eric? I pre-ordered via AppSumo back in October (I think).
- eries 15y agoAll AppSumo customers who bought the Lean Startup Bundle will get a brand-new hardcover copy shipped to them in the mail.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- beilabs 15y agoWill there be an epub format if I get the hard copy? Shiny iPad needs some decent books on it.
- eries 15y agoYes, the book will launch on Kindle/iBooks at the same as hardcover. You can pre-order the Kindle version at http://bit.ly/LeanStartupBook http://bit.ly/LeanStartupBook
- MartinCron 15y agoThanks for making it available on Kindle right away. I just pre-ordered it.
- econgeeker 15y agoYou can currently pre-order it from the iBookstore. Bonus: It is $5 cheaper there than it is on the Kindle!
- staunch 15y agoI can't shake the huckster vibe I get from the "The Lean Startup movement" that Eric Ries so often reminds people he started. He seems determined to profit (through this book and his conference) by rebranding some principles that have been popular in the valley for a long time. I can't think of anyone I respect on entrepreneurship that doesn't practice it themselves. Writing books and doing conferences doesn't count in my book. Sorry, I think I have a bit off an allergic reaction to things that feel even vaguely like Tony Robbins.
- rmason 15y agoYou're welcome to your opinion but Eric has helped a lot of people like me that he has never even met. Reading the four steps to the epiphany helped me knit together what I'd learned and helped me understand why my last startup didn't succeed. But it was the lean startup movement (along with Ash Maurya's book) that gave me a game plan to go forward. As a result of the lean startup movement fewer startups will fail and that's a pretty fine legacy.
- eries 15y agoThanks for the kind words. It takes courage to admit that we don't know everything. (For the record, I certainly don't). I look forward to learning from you, when you're ready to share your story.
- mechanical_fish 15y agoI can't think of anyone I respect on entrepreneurship that doesn't practice it themselves. Me neither, but perhaps you were asleep during the part of the program where Eric Ries: A) worked at at least one startup that exploded on impact with the market in spectacular fashion, B) learned some lessons from that, C) co-founded IMVU and made a bunch of money? Ries may have faults, but a complete lack of practice does not appear to be among them. As for your allergy to salesmanship: Reticence sells nothing. I wish Ries luck in leveraging the awesome psychological powers of branding and the publishing hype cycle to get his ideas in front of more people. I know I've lost years of my time to management who had apparently never heard of these ideas.
- danberger 15y agoEric has done so much for the startup community..... and so much for me in helping me understand how to build a better startup. The least I can do is pre-order his book. Done.
- eries 15y agothank you
- aik 15y agoI am curious about this book, however unfortunately at the moment I'm sick of the marketing efforts. There's been a bit too much book related BUY ME NOW spam on Twitter for months and months on end.
- mattcheney 15y agoIf you wrote a book about a topic you were deeply passionate about, how would you promote it?
- MartinCron 15y agoClearly by posting, "don't buy this book" on Twitter.
- davidw 15y agoThere are many ways to do that, but interestingly enough, John Locke, one of the big early winners from digital publishing on Amazon, suggests not promoting your book heavily on twitter, at least not directly. I'm going to write a post on the book soon, as I thought it quite interesting in its own right, and of course it's very relevant to LiberWriter. It's worth a read if you're at all interested in books: http://t.co/L9XOQ6U http://t.co/L9XOQ6U
- aik 15y agoI'm no writer but have a number of passions I write about often -- just one idea: I would continue to promote the ideas of the book (after all, it's the ideas I would be passionate about, not the book itself), and include a passive mention of the book at the end.
- truthseeker 15y agoI agree with you. I totally believe Eric Ries knows what he is talking about, I love his presentation style and he seems like a really genuine guy. I follow him on twitter and find the sales pitch for the past several months way too much to deal with. Also the constant self-promotion of the ignite/simulcast/whatever conference they are hosting really annoying. May be I am missing some marketing secret Eric Ries et. al have figured out but it doesn't seem to work on me.
- wtvanhest 15y agoPre-ordered. Reading a book like this on Kindle is more fun than reading blogs. I hope it is as well written as your post. <$14 is nothing if I get a single good piece of information.
- bsmith 15y agoPre-ordered. It's time to dilute all the Seth Godin on my bookshelf a little bit.
- jechen 15y agoActually heard about Eric Ries and his lean startup movement from a VC on a booze cruise. He has a lecture series up on Udemy which I watched in one sitting and damn was it a good investment of time. Definitely preodering this book.
- hammock 15y agoI will probably go to the bookstore and read it one afternoon
- dreamdu5t 15y agoBest Advice: Stop listening to people selling advice. Stop buying their books. Instead, go do it. Stop fucking talking about it. Just do it.
- MartinCron 15y agoThat's a false dichotomy, isn't it? Can't you just do it and take a moment to read books and listen to people who have done it and are determined to move the state of the art forward? I "just do it" and read books, so I know it can be done.
- econgeeker 15y agoThis is really good advice, for those who aren't doing it. For those of us who are doing it, however, books such as this one can be very valuable for improving how we're doing it. I've found that some books pay for themselves thousands of times over!
- danielhodgins 15y agoTo do you need to understand. To do you need to know. This is where insightful teachers like Eric Ries and Steve Blank add value. I understand your point, but it's also inefficient to put the pedal to the medal and spin your tires endlessly without having any strategy behind your activity. The whole point of lean startup is to achieve order of magnitude gains of efficiency by focusing on finding out what customers want sooner rather than later. For those that aren't 'doing'- that's their problem. Eric's work is for doers.
- grk 15y agoUgh. Why does the Kindle edition have to be more expensive? I've no interest in having the book on paper, and shipping to Europe takes way more time than Kindle delivery.
- mfieldhouse 15y agoI don't understand the negative response towards someone who is trying to make money by improving peoples lives on a site which is focused on just that. I find there are lessons to be learned from everyone, even the most scammy looking of internet marketers. The hard part is to control ourselves from having the knee-jerk reaction of rejecting the person, and just taking from the material what we think will be useful. Or in other words, take everything with a pinch of salt and keep an open mind.
- swaller 15y agoWait...so a self-proclaimed start-up guru dares to profit off of his own work? If you run a company (and Eric Ries does too, don't forget) and you don't spend a significant portion of your time self-promoting, if you aren't telling everyone you know about what you're working on, and if you don't take credit for your product being the best thing since the iPod, then you're probably not going to do very well. I am looking forward to reading his book and excited for it, but he's not an magic oracle or a god. Your own success will still come from how well you do (or don't) you apply his (and every other author's) lessons to your own business. Keep up the good work, Eric.
- arturadib 15y ago(This review is about the "lean methodology" in general, not the book). I would like to echo and add to some of the criticisms here. I've attended a few lean startup conferences and read several articles by Mr. Ries as well as Mr. Blank's book. While I believe there are some interesting ideas here and there and also generally a lot of societal value in encouraging entrepreneurs to mitigate risks early on, I think these guys are trying too hard to create a "methodology" out of thin air. Once you get past the few interesting ideas you can borrow for your business, the whole thing just sounds like wishful thinking peppered with pseudo-science. (The difference between pseudo-science and science is rigor and empirical evidence; many things in life "make sense", but don't stand against scrutiny or empirical validation). For example, while it sure sounds reasonable to quantify feature/product usage and quickly respond with rapid product iterations or maybe even a "pivot", in practice you can never determine if the reason people are not using your feature/product is because its execution sucks, or because people don't care about it in general. In scientific terms, correlation isn't causation, and it's really tough to resolve the two. Get these mixed up and you might kill a potentially big product/feature because you didn't try hard enough in the execution. More importantly, to the best of my knowledge none of the giants in the tech world followed anything close to the lean methodology. That includes the founders of Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, etc. Great entrepreneurs have and probably will always be fueled by their beliefs, period. It's hard to imagine Steve Jobs being lean about iPods, iPads, etc. He's failed before, sure, but he's also pushed forward at full steam some of the most awesome and successful products I've ever seen. Perhaps after young Mr. Ries runs an Apple or an Amazon, or after he can back his distracting jargons with empirical evidence I'll pay closer attention to the movement as a general methodology. Until then, I'm perfectly happy with simpler, more down-to-earth precedents like Greg Gianforte's "Bootstrapping your business" (incidentally, Mr. Gianforte has founded and run a billion-dollar company).