The Lean Startup

Tue, 18 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

A startup is an experiment, not a plan to execute. That single reframing is what separates Eric Ries’s approach from the way most founders operate, which is to write a confident business plan, spend months building a polished product, and only then discover that no one wants it. Traditional management assumes you have history to lean on — established companies can forecast, set milestones, delegate, and measure against them because they already know what worked last quarter. A startup has none of that. Every assumption about the customer, the problem, and the solution is a guess, so the job isn’t to execute a plan but to test those guesses as fast and as cheaply as you can, then act on what you learn.

Eric Ries on SummaryShelf

The Lean Startup