The Lean Startup

Startup success can be engineered by following the right process, which means it can be learned, which means it can be taught.

My mission: to improve the success rate of new innovative products worldwide.

The concept of entrepreneurship includes anyone who works within my definition of a startup: a human institution designed to create new products and services under conditions of extreme uncertainty.

I believe “entrepreneur” should be considered a job title in all modern companies that depend on innovation for their future growth.

The goal of a startup is to figure out the right thing to build—the thing customers want and will pay for—as quickly as possible.

Anything those customers experience from their interaction with a company should be considered part of that company’s product.

Lean thinking defines value as providing benefit to the customer; anything else is waste.

This is true startup productivity: systematically figuring out the right things to build.

If the plan is to see what happens, a team is guaranteed to succeed—at seeing what happens—but won’t necessarily gain validated learning. This is one of the most important lessons of the scientific method: if you cannot fail, you cannot learn.

Planning is a tool that only works in the presence of a long and stable operating history.