In this post you’ll learn the answers for the questions: what is a lean startup? and what are a few advantages of it?
The world we live in has evolved in such a way that something that used to be a scary beast of 8 heads for many,like starting a business, became something that now at least every other person considers when they are alone with themselves. Starting a business didn’t become any less than what is used to be in the past. The only different thing is that now we have many resources from which to learn the deeper secrets of the business world. All of it with just a click of a button. There is also the fact that any person today who wants to start a business can have access to money borrowed from the bank/ investors as long as the idea behind it is compelling enough, the business plan well-formed and a good credit score. Sometimes the first one is enough. We are also in such an amazing place in time that sometimes there is almost no need to look for millions of dollars from investors to start a business. Sometimes you can start the business “lean style”.
What is a lean startup?
In a few words, a lean startup is a startup whose focus is to build a minimum viable product, and through the feedback gained from the first costumers(maybe early adopters of the product) improve the product in a way that better fits the costumer’s needs. The old idea that only a perfect product with all the possible features should be released to the market is thrown away. Here it’s OK to launch OK products with missing features.
As mentioned on the book The lean startup, a startup should focus on three things:
- Building
- Measuring
- Learning
The product is built with only the essential features needed to do what it’s supposed to do and then it is released to the market. The feedback from the first costumers is then measured, and from these measurements new insights are gained. The entire process is repeated over and over again, and on each iteration, the insights gained from the previous iteration are included on the building phase of the new.
The lean startup methodology has at least 3 advantages:
- Less time is spent on the building phase and because of that less resources(money, people, etc) are required.
- The product is tested before massive amounts of money are spent on building a “perfect” product that maybe nobody wants.
- Hidden insights/understandings about the costumer needs are uncovered on the learning phase without spending loads of resources.
Summary
One more reason to choose the lean startup methodology is that if you don’t have lots of money on the bank to spend, this methodology will give you the power to start small.
It is all about knowledge and experience;)
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