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Entrepreneur's Corner

Dear Entrepreneur, Here Are Lessons You Should Learn From A Lean Startup

BY Getrude Mathayo · August 24, 2021 11:08 am

KEY POINTS

Success is about the system, not about “born-with-it” business talent or special intelligence. Anyone can apply this system, whether you’re a scientist at a startup or an employee at a big corporation.

A startup is essentially an organization formed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model. The idea is to use experiments to see which parts of your business are working and which parts are not so you spend more time on things that work.

Lean Startup describes a new approach for startups and prescribes behaviors they should adapt to increase the likelihood that they will succeed. While the concept is best suited in a technology or Internet context.

Success is about the system, not about “born-with-it” business talent or special intelligence. Anyone can apply this system, whether you’re a scientist at a startup or an employee at a big corporation.

  1. Find out what customers want as soon as possible

Most startups fail. That’s the uncomfortable truth. This obviously goes against the romantic myth of entrepreneurship that is so common in our culture.

Startups usually fail not because of poor technical execution, but because they built something nobody wanted! That is a problem all too common with startups. Teams building products through blind guesswork, hoping that customers will like it.

  1. Eliminate wasted effort by choosing the right activities

A huge amount of waste comes from people working on the wrong things, building products no one wants. There are many things we want to build but don’t know-how.

  1. Learning is the unit of progress

How do you figure out which activities are worthwhile and which are a waste? The most valuable thing for startup teams to do is learn what customers want. The effort that is not absolutely necessary for learning what customers want can be eliminated.

  1. Focus on actionable metrics, not misleading vanity metrics

Vanity metrics are numbers that sound impressive on the surface, but often hide the truth about a business. Vanity metrics can easily mislead and cause overconfidence. Without constant product improvement, your growth could easily crash.

  1. Measure real progress vs. the appearance of progress

Startup press releases often focus on how much money they’ve raised but tell you nothing about how much progress the startup is actually making. It is essential that entrepreneurs understand the reasons behind a startup’s growth. There are many value-destroying kinds of growth that should be avoided.

  1. Grow your startup through the viral spread, paid to advertise, or repeat customers

If you want to grow a profitable business, then this next part should be very exciting to you. Viral spread is when your users introduce your product to new people one-by-one. Many businesses grow by paying for advertising which attracts new customers.

  1. Small batches can be more efficient

Apparently, it is well-established that small batches of work are more efficient than large batches. This fits perfectly with The Lean Startup’s approach of quickly completing a whole, minimum viable product to gain the most learning as soon as possible about what is going right.

Read More: How Do You Get the Right Investors to Fund Your Startup?

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