Tag: startups

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Tuning The Engine: Accountability & Pivots

When a business idea strikes and it begins to take shape with a few notes written on a napkin, entrepreneurs have a vision of where they want to go with these ideas. While entrepreneurs might have somewhat of a plan hashed out as to how to reach their dreams, the path is never a straight line. It is very likely the idea, the market, and even the customer base will change and evolve into something that was never part of the original plan. Throughout his book, The Lean Startup, Eric Ries makes the argument that startups do not know who their customers are until they start offering products or services and learning from these interactions (2011). The argument is not very clear until reading his thoughts on accountability and the decision of whether to pivot or persevere. Continue reading “Tuning The Engine: Accountability & Pivots”

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Test Driving Products for Deeper Insights

Discussions about startups that achieved tremendous success usually turn to organizations such as Amazon, Google, Facebook or other renown businesses. While these organizations are great examples of success, many new entrepreneurs fail to capture the true lessons to be learned from these businesses. Entrepreneurs should focus on approaches and factors within these organizations rather than analyzing specific practices. In Part Two of The Lean Startup, Eric Ries makes the argument that each startup faces a unique set of circumstances and should conduct market and product experiments reflecting their own situations (2011, p. 80). Ries also introduces minimum viable products (MVPs) as a means to obtain valuable insight about a product and its potential for growth and value. Other leaders such as Matt Blumberg, agree with Ries and offer additional insight on both of these ideas. Continue reading “Test Driving Products for Deeper Insights”

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Learning and Experiments

Have you ever been in a post-activity meeting to discuss the outcomes of an event, and whether the plan in place was properly followed? If so, this a case of after-the-fact learning or rationalization that follows traditional business planning. Classical business planning calls for creating a plan, execution of the plan, evaluation of results, and looping back to minor adjustments of the initial plan. However, Eric Ries warns about “achieved failure” or successfully, faithfully, and rigorously executing a plan that turned out to have been utterly flawed” (2011, p. 22). In order to combat achieved failure, the Lean Startup method calls for validated learning, which is the process of demonstrating empirically that a team has discovered valuable truths about a startup present and future business prospects (Ries, 2011, p. 38). The reasoning behind finding these “valuable truths” is to carefully craft an experiment in which data-driven hypothesis are tested before vast amounts of financial capital, time, and efforts are spent on a given idea. While this theoretical reasoning based on the scientific method sounds complex, its application to business and startups is simpler than it looks.

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