Last week the Copenhagen
Lean Startup Circle and Silicon
Vikings co-hosted yet another interesting event on the Lean Startup
concept. This time at Copenhagen School of
Entrepreneurship (CSE) headlining Ash Maurya who has authored the Lean
Startup methodology book Running Lean.
Ash is a serial entrepreneur and a keen ambassador for the Lean Startup
movement, which is sweeping the startup world at the moment. He is the creator
of the Lean
Canvas (start your own here), author of
the books Running Lean and the Customer Factory (in process). Back in December
2013, he headlined the Lean Startup Conference in San Francisco and he is
behind one of the most read startup blogs in the world: www.practicetrumpstheory.com.
In his own words his Lean journey started when confronted with the works
on Customer Development and Lean Startup pioneered by Steve Blank and Eric
Ries. He joined in on the conversation and started applying and testing the
principles on his own ventures all the while sharing his learnings on his blog
mentioned above. The blog eventually turned into the Running Lean book aimed at
helping entrepreneurs
raise their odds of success.
At CSE Ash shared some of the insights from his book. Here I will share
what I took with me from the event:
The myth
about the perfect idea and the visionary entrepreneur
Entrepreneurial success is not so much about starting with the
perfect idea. Rather it is a question of arriving at a plan that works before
you run out of resources. For this you need to be willing to learn and you need
to be ready to do it fast. In contrast to the glamour picture of the
entrepreneurial genius, most successes are based on a lot of failures and learnings
along the way.
Some principles
of Running Lean
- Plan for
systematic learning
To be a
systematic learner you need to find ways to test your assumptions and visions.
You also need to be aware of the fact that entrepreneurs often fail to see the
entire business potential of initial and even mature ideas.
- Listen to
customers
A simple way
to design for fast learning, which is key to the lean startup concept is
talking and genuinely listening to customers. By doing so you can learn about
their problems and start figuring out how to solve them. The most important entrepreneurial
mantra in this context is: You don't need to build a solution to validate if
you've found a problem worth solving! Simply ask your customers. This practice
can save you a lot of time and a lot of wasted resources and thus get you
running Lean.
- Test to
learn
Document
your plan. Knowing what you are doing and how you are doing it, while measuring
for progress will let you test the plan in order to change it for the better.
This includes testing solution and product feasibility, testing customer demand
and testing business model repeatability etc.
- De-risk your
business model
Identify the
riskiest parts of your plan and work systematically on de-risking your product
and business model
- ‘Canvas’
your plan
An easy way
to do this is to work with the Lean canvas which condenses a business plan to
one sheet and brakes it down into workable elements.
There’s no
secret sauce and no silver bullet
There's no guarantee for success but living by the Lean principles
will raise the odds of it. However as Ash put it: You should never take the
Lean principles on faith. You have to go test them out for yourself! Running
Lean is not a theory, it is build on experience and requires hard work, strong
intention and an attitude supportive of learning, focus and speed. Thus Ash supports
Steve Blank’s urging mantra for entrepreneurs to get out of the building which
is clearly emphasized by the title of his blog: Practice trumps theory!
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