Sorry to add to my rant but I get really tired of hearing the "X methodology killed my business" story. There have been hundreds of thousands of successful bus

Sorry to add to my rant but I get really tired of hearing the "X methodology killed my business" story. There have been hundreds of thousands of successful businesses created and operated by people without formal training in any strategy so why should having read about a business strategy destroy your business? Did it remove your ability to talk to customers and respond to their concerns? People often fail to address internal issues like limited domain expertise or limited business skills. It's not enough just to see a problem and be excited about solving it, you need some skills (either present or learned) and you need resources. Lean is focused around learnings. If you had focused on learning rather than whether or not you completed a task (MVP, demo, etc), you'd realize that you've gained a lot from the experience but it wasn't until you reflected that you realized you failed to incorporate those learnings back into the business. Also, failure to understand that your first customer wasn't an early-adopter really hurt you. If someone isn't willing to jump through hoops to use your product, it either 1) doesn't solve a big enough problem or 2) they aren't an early-adopter.