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Motivation for success



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The Lean Startup by Eric Ries

Milja Laakso

27.2.2018

 

 

Uncertainty is said to be one of the strongest feelings a starting entrepreneur experiences when finally setting up his or her new start-up business.  Eric Ries’ book “The Lean Startup” starts with the description of entrepreneurship being the creation of something new in extremely uncertain conditions. The book’s point is to give good insight as well as real life examples on how to avoid making the basic mistakes most starting entrepreneurs do and how to maximise the best outcome for a product or service and business in general.

 

The book starts with a bold and a pretty discouraging fact stating how most of all new start-ups are predicted to fail. Constant failure of small companies seems unavoidable, which really bothered me at the start of reading “The Lean Startup”. Why start off with such a negative statement? Ultimately it occurred to me that it is just a fact that has to be kept in mind as an entrepreneur and the book really had some good points to take into consideration in the future. Learning from failures and real life stories of start-ups really can help when building your own company.

 

Some points made in the book forced me to compare the real life stories with our team’s situation and actual projects that we have now started to work on. It is true what Ries stated that those who plan their service or product too much ahead have already in a way made a mistake that might ultimately ruin the result. Entrepreneurship and start-up strategies cannot be planned ahead since they are unpredictable and uncertain. This to me was important to learn. No more wasting time on perfecting products first thing but to actually do something and make changes according to what happens after that.

 

Feedback and communication with customers was pointed out to be a necessity when developing products and services in a startup company. Ries gave examples of companies launching products and altering them after getting detailed customer feedback. This point made me feel like the book might be soon slightly outdated. In my opinion these days with social media and easy communication flow with customers make it hard for a company not to hear and react any feedback. Reviews and comments are very easily found and for a company to sell their product or service it is mandatory for them to alter them to fit customer needs. The book’s point was important and companies need to give thought to it, but to me it seems to be an obvious step these days.

 

Taking risks and having the courage to make tough decisions and changes to become better are skills every entrepreneur and start-up owner needs. Constant analysing, experimentation (production) and predictions for the future are things an entrepreneur cannot put aside or forget.

 

“The Lean Startup” was easy to read and interesting. The real life examples such as the story of the creation of Zappos and example of efficiency with comparison to envelope filling and Toyota’s manufacturing methods were a really intriguing.

 

The overall message of the book is to motivate and drive fresh entrepreneurs to the right direction and help them not to make mistakes. However, you always learn from mistakes and they are as valuable lessons for the future as success is.

Comments
  • Joonas Koivumaa

    Good essay and reflection Milja! I was thinking about on the feedback point of view you brought up there. There might be some seed of truth in the B2C point of view when the consumers post their feedback online that the feedback could move forward that. Still questions like is it reliable and is it more saturated of “angry people” answering. But hey, anyhow! Keep up the good work.

    16.3.2018
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