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I bought Ries book and made it most of the way through. The problem here is that the Agile/Lean startup field is still in its infancy. The ideas are just now c

I bought Ries book and made it most of the way through. The problem here is that the Agile/Lean startup field is still in its infancy. The ideas are just now congealing. That's good news because it means the field is wide open -- there are going to be a lot of cool new developments. But it's also bad news because every book you get is going to be hit-and-miss: a few good ideas, a few ideas that sound wacky, and a lot of noise. Agile is like that. It's a collection of best practices around iterative and incremental technology development. That's why it drives some folks nuts: different people can give you different answers and in the end it's all about custom tailoring and results-oriented process. What we're seeing now is this agile/best-practices idea extended to the startup world. That's a good thing! There's really good stuff in there. But it's going to evolve over many years, and just like Agile in the end you're not going to end up with a recipe book as much as a place to start, a lot of good material to absorb, and some guiding principles. It'll probably be something like the learn-do-adapt process we see in Scrum (Obligatory plug: just blogged about this the other day and posted about it on HN. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3404085 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3404085) So I like the Lean Startup idea. I'm just not sure what it is yet. I don't think anybody is.

davidw 15y ago
I'm fairly convinced that there is some good stuff behind 'lean startups', and that it's not just a fad. What I'm a bit more skeptical of is how much of it can actually be distilled into practical advice, and how much of it would fit just fine in a one page summary. Here's another way of looking at it, for fans of the book: What concrete things did you do after having read it that you might have overlooked previously? Let's measure something:-)
- DanielBMarkham 15y ago
  Here's one for you. Last year I tried an experiment where I developed a new website or app every two weeks. At the end of two weeks, I switched and started on something new. "Normally," you're supposed to spend years on one idea, slogging away. I said "screw that" and decided I try an iterative shotgun approach. I put out a lot of things, talked about them all, and then let each one of them compete for my attention. hn-books was one of these ideas (http://hn-books.com http://hn-books.com) This was extreme iterative behavior, and I don't know anybody that recommends it. But I had a really good experience doing this and plan on starting back up in January. I found it's a better experience learning about the entire process of business model creation over and over again than just doing it one time and trying to get it perfect. If I were at YC, I'd probably pick up on a lot of that through social contacts with all the other folks, but on my own I found that iteration on something real and tangible was really the best way to learn. EDIT: My comment seems very ironic considering that a couple of the other comments on this thread are basically along the lines of "it's really smart people and theory, but nothing that practical" In fact, in this experiment found it to be extremely practical.
- akg_67 15y ago
  I have found customer discovery section of Steve Blank's Four Steps book and Business Model canvas from Business Model Generation book to be very invaluable tools for evaluating new ideas whether my own or of other new potential entrepreneurs. I actually converted customer discovery section into one pagers like canvas. It allows me to quickly go through evaluating any new idea, document different aspects, and identify holes in my understanding and where to focus. none of the stuff listed is unique but it provides a easy step by step actionable structure. I find just documenting business model canvas, product and customer hypotheses enough to figure out potential and challenges involved in pursuing an idea.
- swombat 15y ago
  I'm still reading it, so not had the time to truly practice it, but one important idea I've taken out of it is the idea of the growth and value hypotheses being the key assumptions in a startup's infancy. I already believed that a startup is a series of hypotheses to be checked out, but focusing on the value hypothesis (will this product deliver value to its customers/users) and growth (will we be able to grow the user base as we expect) first is a good insight.
- wpietri 15y ago
  I think some of the fundamental bits can be distilled down. The highly iterative nature of it and the rigorous hypothesis testing is pretty clear to explain, and it really grabs people who get it. A while back I mentored at a Lean Startup Machine event. Basically you take a weekend, come up with a product idea, and then tackle it in the Lean Startup fashion. One team came up with an idea for a photo-related product. Saturday morning they were arguing endlessly about the right features in the typical product meeting fashion. After hearing the "get outside the building" mantra about 7000 times, they finally did it. They went down to Fisherman's Wharf and did quick interviews with actual people. They discovered that almost everything they were arguing about didn't matter to real potential customers. So they came back and produced some mockups of a very different product, one based on what real people said they wanted. They went back out again with the mockups, did more interviews, and revised again. Then they took what they had learned, built a simple landing page, and drove traffic against it. They did A/B tests to see what price people liked and how to pitch it. By Sunday afternoon, they had a list of people who were ready to pay money for their product. In a weekend, they had made progress that would have taken many companies months just by eliminating a lot of pointless bullshit. It was amazing to watch, and they totally got it. One of the people on the team went back to work, endured a couple of idiotic product meetings, and quit his job. Last I heard he was building iPad apps and loving it.

davidw 15y ago

I'm fairly convinced that there is some good stuff behind 'lean startups', and that it's not just a fad. What I'm a bit more skeptical of is how much of it can actually be distilled into practical advice, and how much of it would fit just fine in a one page summary. Here's another way of looking at it, for fans of the book: What concrete things did you do after having read it that you might have overlooked previously? Let's measure something:-)

DanielBMarkham 15y ago
Here's one for you. Last year I tried an experiment where I developed a new website or app every two weeks. At the end of two weeks, I switched and started on something new. "Normally," you're supposed to spend years on one idea, slogging away. I said "screw that" and decided I try an iterative shotgun approach. I put out a lot of things, talked about them all, and then let each one of them compete for my attention. hn-books was one of these ideas (http://hn-books.com http://hn-books.com) This was extreme iterative behavior, and I don't know anybody that recommends it. But I had a really good experience doing this and plan on starting back up in January. I found it's a better experience learning about the entire process of business model creation over and over again than just doing it one time and trying to get it perfect. If I were at YC, I'd probably pick up on a lot of that through social contacts with all the other folks, but on my own I found that iteration on something real and tangible was really the best way to learn. EDIT: My comment seems very ironic considering that a couple of the other comments on this thread are basically along the lines of "it's really smart people and theory, but nothing that practical" In fact, in this experiment found it to be extremely practical.
akg_67 15y ago
I have found customer discovery section of Steve Blank's Four Steps book and Business Model canvas from Business Model Generation book to be very invaluable tools for evaluating new ideas whether my own or of other new potential entrepreneurs. I actually converted customer discovery section into one pagers like canvas. It allows me to quickly go through evaluating any new idea, document different aspects, and identify holes in my understanding and where to focus. none of the stuff listed is unique but it provides a easy step by step actionable structure. I find just documenting business model canvas, product and customer hypotheses enough to figure out potential and challenges involved in pursuing an idea.
swombat 15y ago
I'm still reading it, so not had the time to truly practice it, but one important idea I've taken out of it is the idea of the growth and value hypotheses being the key assumptions in a startup's infancy. I already believed that a startup is a series of hypotheses to be checked out, but focusing on the value hypothesis (will this product deliver value to its customers/users) and growth (will we be able to grow the user base as we expect) first is a good insight.
wpietri 15y ago
I think some of the fundamental bits can be distilled down. The highly iterative nature of it and the rigorous hypothesis testing is pretty clear to explain, and it really grabs people who get it. A while back I mentored at a Lean Startup Machine event. Basically you take a weekend, come up with a product idea, and then tackle it in the Lean Startup fashion. One team came up with an idea for a photo-related product. Saturday morning they were arguing endlessly about the right features in the typical product meeting fashion. After hearing the "get outside the building" mantra about 7000 times, they finally did it. They went down to Fisherman's Wharf and did quick interviews with actual people. They discovered that almost everything they were arguing about didn't matter to real potential customers. So they came back and produced some mockups of a very different product, one based on what real people said they wanted. They went back out again with the mockups, did more interviews, and revised again. Then they took what they had learned, built a simple landing page, and drove traffic against it. They did A/B tests to see what price people liked and how to pitch it. By Sunday afternoon, they had a list of people who were ready to pay money for their product. In a weekend, they had made progress that would have taken many companies months just by eliminating a lot of pointless bullshit. It was amazing to watch, and they totally got it. One of the people on the team went back to work, endured a couple of idiotic product meetings, and quit his job. Last I heard he was building iPad apps and loving it.