Startup Marketing Blog – By Sean Ellis

What is the Lean Startup Approach?

It took a recession for entrepreneurs to finally start launching startups the right way. But in my experience, a lean startup approach is ideal in any economy.

The two key pillars of the lean startup are customer development and agile product development. Both involve a systematic process of learning through feedback and driving improvement through metrics driven testing. Contrast this to the traditional startup approach of bloated budgets supporting large marketing and development initiatives based purely on intuition.

While I have been working hard to evolve and promote metrics driven customer development, Eric Ries has evangelized the complete lean startup approach. And he has included practical execution guidance (often to the annoyance of more guarded practitioners of agile development).

All startup founders and engineers should find the time to attend Eric’s workshop – if you can get in. You won’t be disappointed.

Posted in Agile Development, Customer Development, Eric Ries
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The Lean Startup Era?

Steve Blank and Eric Ries presented their lean startup approach to a very receptive crowd at last night’s Startup2Startup dinner in Palo Alto.   Here’s a link to the must watch video.

Highlight’s of of the presentation include:

• Startups fail from lack of customer – not product failures
• Fail fast and often on the path to success
• Decide on a business model early
• The correct customer development approach changes by market type

Following the presentation each table discussed the topics over dinner.  I was pleasantly surprised that  the entrepreneurs at my table had all implimented some form of customer development and agile development.

Posted in Agile Development, Customer Development, Eric Ries, Lean Startup Entrepreneurs, Steven Blank
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