The Lean Start-up Methodology By Eric Ries

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Eric Ries is one of Steve Blank’s most successful students and mentees. Eric Ries is famous for his Lean Startup methodology. It is easy to mistake the Lean Startup for

a basic suggestion to run your business in a lean way. But that isn’t what this methodology is. The Lean Startup methodology is a process that optimizes the rate at which you launch and improve your product. Let’s dive into this a little deeper.

Let’s use the example from the previous section where you have gone through Steve Blank’s Customer Development methodology, and now you understand what kind of a

product is needed by the businesses to which you are trying to sell. That is great! Now you need to actually create this product. And this is where the Lean Startup methodology

largely takes over from the Customer Development methodology. I say largely because the truth is that throughout the lifetime of your business you should not stop

practicing either of these methodologies because these are the best ways to maintain a deep understanding of your customers, and continue to evolve and improve your product.

The first part of the Lean Startup methodology focuses on actually launching and releasing the first version of your product. A common mistake people often make is to

think up a very bulky product that is rich in features. But that adds product risk (remember product risk from an earlier chapter in this book?). The Lean Startup dictates that you launch something called the Minimum Viable Product, also known as the MVP. Note that this is the minimal version of your product that is also viable. It is easy to just release something minimal. But don’t forget the viable part of the equation. The product must work and must be usable by your potential customers.

Once you release the Minimum Viable Product (MVP), you can quickly put that into the hands of your potential customers, and gather feedback about what they think about it,

whether they would continue to use it, whether it is actually helpful to them, whether they would eventually pay money for something like this, and what may still be lacking in the product.

Keep in mind that almost no product was ever perfect in its first version. So don’t expect your product to be perfect either. And don’t be disappointed when people tell you what isn’t very good about the product. If people tell you that the product is great, they are probably just not thinking about it hard enough. Instead, as you are gathering feedback

about your MVP, try to understand where your product is lacking and how you can improve it. Then quickly improve those parts of the product and release your updated product. Then get feedback all over again to understand new ways that your product is imperfect, and how to improve it. Throughout the lifetime of your business you will need to be constantly performing this cycle of feedback gathering and product improvement. Although in the beginning stages of your business, the iterations may come in more rapid succession, and as your product and business mature, you may decrease the rate of iterations.

To give you a real world case study example, when I launched my first Problemio app on Android (where you are allowed to make as many app updates as you want and as quickly as you want), on some days I would release a new app update as often as 3 times per day. Over time the rate at which I updated that app slowed down to the current rate of about one every few weeks. To date there have been nearly 200 big and small updates to my original app, and I never plan to completely stop updating the apps. There are always ways the apps can be improved. And you will likely have a similar journey with your product, especially if it is a technology based product.

Further Business Resources

For more business-starting resources, please take a look at our business planning mobile apps. Here is the iOS business plan app and here is the Android business plan app.  Additionally, here is the iOS marketing app. And here is the Android marketing app. And here are our business apps on the Kindle. And here is an article where I give the argument that our Android apps are the best business apps on Android.

And please check out and subscribe to my YouTube channel where we cover many marketing topics.

Author: Alex Genadinik

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