Lean startup chapitre 1

The first chapter is focused on the fact that startups need management to succeed.

First of all, most startups adopt a “Just do it attitude”, that means that contrary to big firms, they avoid processes, structure and of course all forms of management. This way of thinking is totally bad, and it leads most of the time to chaos. We will first see how management is such important and then what advice can be given to the entrepreneurs.

Let’s now talk about the context: As Eric RIES said: “We are living through an unprecedented worldwide entrepreneurial renaissance”. Indeed, we are currently facing the most entrepreneurs than we ever had in history. Our improvement in management and the fact that technology gets always better and better, lead to an increase in productivity at a point where firms themselves didn’t expect. As an example, in the book we see the manufacturing jobs in the US. The number of those jobs is decreasing whereas the total output is still increasing each year: it is explained by the fact that the technology is improving and so those jobs become less and less useful for firms. That what has been done by Toyota, where the management has taken a new turn. The point was to understand the waste of the process and then think on a new way of doing it in order to be more efficient. That’s what lead Toyota his very large success and that showed us why management is important.

Let’s approach the notion of validated leaning. It is a new way for entrepreneurs to judge their progress. The goal here is to guide entrepreneurs. Indeed, they are working in a context of extreme uncertainty. But for them to make the best predictions they can, they will need some functions such as marketing and sales, partnerships and distribution… Indeed, working with departments is the best way for employees to do their best because it allows them to evaluate themselves between days, working all together will led people to learn more things in others domain but they will work less in their domain.

Then, the main goal of a startup is to find out the right thing that people will be willing to buy. Indeed, you can’t predict everything, and it is not a good idea to try, but the thing here is to have a goal that you will always try to achieve but in order to do that you will make constant adjustments. Your goal will be your vision, it is not supposed to change, and you need to have it in your mind every time and make everything you can to achieve it. Then your product, it will evolve with time with like new features in order to optimize it. Concerning your strategy, it can change, and it is called a “pivot”. That is called the “Build-Measure-Lean” and it is here to help entrepreneurs drive their startups at every time and not to make them able to predict everything before launching a new project.

To conclude this first chapter, a startup is a “portfolio