The Lean Startup by Eric Ries

2021-01-30 2 min read Sincheenz

This book was recommended by many entrepreneurs I have spoke to. They told me how much it had helped them,so I decided to read it for myself. I liked the title. I was familiar with lean manufacturing, which my father had told me about as a kid. He was a big fan of the Toyota way and Japanese business practices and ethics. This got me interested in the book as well. Applying the concepts of Lean Manufacturing to Software Products was very interesting. As with other startup books, Eric emphasizes on developing customer centric products. He emphasizes on releasing an MVP as early as possible to the customer and then gather their feedback to improve and develop further. He keeps emphasizing that the MVP need not be perfect, it only has to do the basic. This approach makes sense, but there is some risk to this. Shipping an unfinished, buggy prototype and then reworking it can be risky. Another school of thought suggests that it would be better to create an MVP with at least one well-working feature, demonstrating both simplicity and sophistication. This approach gives clients confidence in the product’s quality from the start, rather than risking their first impression with an unfinished product. Other key takeaways include

pivoting when things dont work out
continuously innovating and adapting
minimizeing the waste, developing iteratively

What especially stuck with me is “Asking the 5 whys” for testing assumptions and hypotheses. Overall, I found the book valuable and recommend it.