FAIL FAST, FAIL FAST, FAIL FAST

As Eric Ries describes it, being a startup is “a human institution designed to create a new product or service under conditions of extreme uncertainty”. (Lean Startup, 2016). Talking about company that’s based on Lean Startup, it means that the company is doing continuous testing and learning from the results. To knowledge about the customers needs requires to fail fast. That’s how the company stays fertile. Lean is about making process around the development of a product.

The most valuable thing that the book gave me was the examples of the systems that are behind the successful products. In customers point of a view, we cannot see the changes that the final product has required. The book also opened my eyes in many ways what comes to entrepreneurship and especially startups. Usually people who wants to become entrepreneurs, have an ambition. We do not only work for a living. We have a greater vision of something more collaborative. A good example in the book was Farbood Nivi’s case. Nivi was the founder of the Grockit company. He was making a decent living by the Grockit but the main reason to making his own company was to establish more effective kind of teaching for students everywhere. That’s why he launched a company where he was doing teaching online.

Usually when the company becomes larger, it loses its ability of creativity and innovating. Instead of launching something new to the markets and disappear after the trend is over, Lean’s goal is to keep going. Companies shouldn’t be based only one innovation that serves only the current customer demand. The company should work like a living organism and change in the same proportion than the markets. That’s why the innovative spirit must be maintained in the companies, because there is always a new customer segment to capture and new need to be fulfilled.

KEY WORDS OF THE LEAN STARTUP

Hypothesis is the presumption what customer wants. In the Lean thinking the angle to approach the innovation is by asking the question for the most important source – people. The biggest mistake is to underestimate this part. “Many features that make the product better in the eyes of engineers and designers have no impact on customer behavior”. (The Lean Startup, 2016). It’s important to know whose need the product is made to fill.

Making the hypothesis, instead of asking can we build the product, we should ask should we build this product. Again, who should be the one that gives the answer? The customer. And that’s how the measuring part begins.

Minum Viable Product (MVP) is the first version of the product that can be launched to markets. To get the best data out of it, MVP should include the functions that are necessary to implement the overall vision for it.  That’s how it collects the real data of the company’s situation. Split-test experiment is a test where two opportunities are launched to the markets. After that it’s easy to see which one the customer is more prone to buy and find out why.

Feedback loop:” The only way to win is to learn faster than anyone else.” (The Lean Startup, 2016). And how it can be done, is to fail fast. The core of Build-Measure-Learn feedback loop is to realize that it’s more important to learn than success in the first place. When the first version of the product is in the hands of a customer, it’s able to give the valuable feedback what kind of changes needs to be done before customer is satisfied enough of to buy the product. It’s very important to use right tools to measure the data and put numbers in account to make the loop profitable.

Pivot or preserve is the part that every product needs to pass. The signs that the product development should be more effective or there is something that is not giving the result that was expected, forces to the decision making either make a pivot or preserve.

This part of product development requires courage. Making a pivot means taking a different method for achieving the vision. Preserving is to stick in the original plan even tough it seems desperate but still there might be a way to succeed.

”Stop production so that production never has to stop”.

– Toyota proverb

At least these keywords need to be taking in to account if you want to establish your company to Lean philosophy but there is still many things in the book that are important to understand. For me these keywords were the most important way to perceive what Lean is. A good quote to sum up everything: “Lean isn’t simply about spending less money. Lean isn’t just about failing fast, failing cheap. It is about putting a process, a methodology around the development of a product.” (The Lean Startup, 2016).

Sources

The Lean Startup Eric Ries, 2016

http://theleanstartup.com/principles

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sobxOzRjAGg