Top highlights from The Lean Startup
The only way to win is to learn faster than anyone else.
Show this quote
We must learn what customers really want, not what they say they want or what we think they should want.
Show this quote
Reading is good, action is better.
Show this quote
if you cannot fail, you cannot learn.
Show this quote
As you consider building your own minimum viable product, let this simple rule suffice: remove any feature, process, or effort that does not contribute directly to the learning you seek.
Show this quote
A startup is a human institution designed to create a new product or service under conditions of extreme uncertainty.
Show this quote
The big question of our time is not Can it be built? but Should it be built? This places us in an unusual historical moment: our future prosperity depends on the quality of our collective imaginations.
Show this quote
When in doubt, simplify.
Show this quote
Success is not delivering a feature; success is learning how to solve the customers problem.
Show this quote
The lesson of the MVP is that any additional work beyond what was required to start learning is waste, no matter how important it might have seemed at the time.
Show this quote
Innovation is a bottoms-up, decentralized, and unpredictable thing, but that doesnt mean it cannot be managed.
Show this quote
When blame inevitably arises, the most senior people in the room should repeat this mantra: if a mistake happens, shame on us for making it so easy to make that mistake.
Show this quote
This is one of the most important lessons of the scientific method: if you cannot fail, you cannot learn.
Show this quote
Build-Measure-Learn feedback loop is at the core of the Lean Startup model.
Show this quote
If we do not know who the customer is, we do not know what quality is.
Show this quote
Customers dont care how much time something takes to build. They care only if it serves their needs.
Show this quote
Metcalfes law: the value of a network as a whole is proportional to the square of the number of participants. In other words, the more people in the network, the more valuable the network.
Show this quote
What if we found ourselves building something that nobody wanted? In that case what did it matter if we did it on time and on budget?
Show this quote
Peter Drucker said, There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all.2
Show this quote
The ability to learn faster from customers is the essential competitive advantage that startups must possess.
Show this quote
Leadership requires creating conditions that enable employees to do the kinds of experimentation that entrepreneurship requires.
Show this quote
The point is not to find the average customer but to find early adopters: the customers who feel the need for the product most acutely. Those customers tend to be more forgiving of mistakes and are especially eager to give feedback.
Show this quote
In the Lean Startup model, an experiment is more than just a theoretical inquiry; it is also a first product.
Show this quote
Anything those customers experience from their interaction with a company should be considered part of that companys product.
Show this quote
there is no bigger destroyer of creative potential than the misguided decision to persevere.
Show this quote
Ask most entrepreneurs who have decided to pivot and they will tell you that they wish they had made the decision sooner.
Show this quote
You cannot be sure you really understand any part of any business problem unless you go and see for yourself firsthand. It is unacceptable to take anything for granted or to rely on the reports of others.
Show this quote
All innovation begins with vision. Its what happens next that is critical.
Show this quote
Entrepreneurs are everywhere. You dont have to work in a garage to be in a startup. The concept of entrepreneurship includes anyone who works within my definition of a startup: a human institution designed to create new products and services under conditions of extreme uncertainty. That means entrepreneurs are everywhere and the Lean Startup approach can work in any size company, even a very large enterprise, in any sector or industry. 2. Entrepreneurship is management. A startup is an institution, not just a product, and so it requires a new kind of management specifically geared to its context of extreme uncertainty. In fact, as I will argue later, I believe entrepreneur should be considered a job title in all modern companies that depend on innovation for their future growth. 3. Validated learning. Startups exist not just to make stuff, make money, or even serve customers. They exist to learn how to build a sustainable business. This learning can be validated scientifically by running frequent experiments that allow entrepreneurs to test each element of their vision. 4. Build-Measure-Learn. The fundamental activity of a startup is to turn ideas into products, measure how customers respond, and then learn whether to pivot or persevere. All successful startup processes should be geared to accelerate that feedback loop. 5. Innovation accounting. To improve entrepreneurial outcomes and hold innovators accountable, we need to focus on the boring stuff: how to measure progress, how to set up milestones, and how to prioritize work. This requires a new kind of accounting designed for startupsand the people who hold them accountable.
Show this quote
This is an important rule: a good design is one that changes customer behavior for the better.
Show this quote
Failure is a prerequisite to learning.
Show this quote
It is insufficient to exhort workers to try harder. Our current problems are caused by trying too hardat the wrong things.
Show this quote
Zero invites imagination, but small numbers invite questions about whether large numbers will ever materialize.
Show this quote
After more than ten years as an entrepreneur, I came to reject that line of thinking. I have learned from both my own successes and failures and those of many others that its the boring stuff that matters the most. Startup success is not a consequence of good genes or being in the right place at the right time. Startup success can be engineered by following the right process, which means it can be learned, which means it can be taught.
Show this quote
the Lean Startup is a new way of looking at the development of innovative new products that emphasizes fast iteration and customer insight, a huge vision, and great ambition, all at the same time.
Show this quote
You cant take learning to the bank; you cant spend it or invest it.
Show this quote
Startups exist not just to make stuff, make money, or even serve customers. They exist to learn how to build a sustainable business. This
Show this quote
waiting too long to release can lead to the ultimate waste: making something that nobody wants.
Show this quote
if you are asking, youre not there yet.
Show this quote
Most of the time customers dont know what they want in advance.)
Show this quote
Startup success is not a consequence of good genes or being in the right place at the right time. Startup success can be engineered by following the right process, which means it can be learned, which means it can be taught.
Show this quote
The goal of a startup is to figure out the right thing to buildthe thing customers want and will pay foras quickly as possible.
Show this quote
Only 5 percent of entrepreneurship is the big idea, the business model, the whiteboard strategizing, and the splitting up of the spoils. The other 95 percent is the gritty work that is measured by innovation accounting: product prioritization decisions, deciding which customers to target or listen to, and having the courage to subject a grand vision to constant testing and feedback.
Show this quote
If we stopped wasting peoples time, what would they do with it?
Show this quote
The CEO and VP of product, instead of building their business, are engaged in the drudgery of solving just one customers problem. Instead of marketing themselves to millions, they sold themselves to one.
Show this quote
The Lean Startup asks people to start measuring their productivity differently. Because startups often accidentally build something nobody wants, it doesnt matter much if they do it on time and on budget. The goal of a startup is to figure out the right thing to buildthe thing customers want and will pay foras quickly as possible. In other words, the Lean Startup is a new way of looking at the development of innovative new products that emphasizes fast iteration and customer insight, a huge vision, and great ambition, all at the same time.
Show this quote
when you have only one test, you dont have entrepreneurs, you have politicians, because you have to sell.
Show this quote
entrepreneurship should be considered a viable career path for innovators inside large organizations.
Show this quote
Lean thinking defines value as providing benefit to the customer; anything else is waste. In
Show this quote
Toyota discovered that small batches made their factories more efficient. In contrast, in the Lean Startup the goal is not to produce more stuff efficiently. It is to-as quickly as possible-learn how to build a sustainable business.
Show this quote
Startup, I have always been a bit of a troublemaker at the companies at which I have worked, pushing for rapid iteration, data-driven decision making, and early customer involvement.
Show this quote
People are accustomed to thinking of accounting as dry and boring, a necessary evil used primarily to prepare financial reports and survive audits, but that is because accounting is something that has become taken for granted.
Show this quote
In my Toyota interviews, when I asked what distinguishes the Toyota Way from other management approaches, the most common first response was genchi gembutsuwhether I was in manufacturing, product development, sales, distribution, or public affairs. You cannot be sure you really understand any part of any business problem unless you go and see for yourself firsthand. It is unacceptable to take anything for granted or to rely on the reports of others.
Show this quote
There is a reason all past management revolutions have been led by engineers: management is human systems engineering.
Show this quote
This is one of the most important discoveries of the lean manufacturing movement: you cannot trade quality for time. If you are causing (or missing) quality problems now, the resulting defects will slow you down later.
Show this quote
We do everything wrong: instead of spending years perfecting our technology, we build a minimum viable product, an early product that is terrible, full of bugs and crash-your-computer-yes-really stability problems. Then we ship it to customers way before its ready. And we charge money for it. After securing initial customers, we change the product constantlymuch too fast by traditional standardsshipping new versions of our product dozens of times every single day.
Show this quote
Cycle after cycle, the team is working hard, but the business is not seeing results. Managers trained in a traditional model draw the logical conclusion: our team is not working hard, not working effectively, or not working efficiently.
Show this quote
I call this building an adaptive organization, one that automatically adjusts its process and performance to current conditions.
Show this quote
New customers come from the actions of past customers.
Show this quote
Visionaries are especially afraid of a false negative: that customers will reject a flawed MVP that is too small or too limited.[]The solution to this dilemma is a commitment to iteration. You have to commit to a locked-in agreementahead of timethat no matter what comes of testing the MVP, you will not give up hope. Successful entrepreneurs do not give up at the first sign of trouble, nor do they persevere the plan right into the ground. Instead, they process a unique combination of perseverance and flexibility.
Show this quote
