The Lean Startup

How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses

By: Eric Ries

Narrated by: Eric Ries

Length: 8 hrs and 38 mins

Publisher's summary

Most startups fail. But many of those failures are preventable. The Lean Startup is a new approach being adopted across the globe, changing the way companies are built and new products are launched.

Eric Ries defines a startup as an organization dedicated to creating something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty. This is just as true for one person in a garage or a group of seasoned professionals in a Fortune 500 boardroom. What they have in common is a mission to penetrate that fog of uncertainty to discover a successful path to a sustainable business.

The Lean Startup approach fosters companies that are both more capital efficient and that leverage human creativity more effectively. Inspired by lessons from lean manufacturing, it relies on “validated learning”, rapid scientific experimentation, as well as a number of counter-intuitive practices that shorten product-development cycles, measure actual progress without resorting to vanity metrics, and learn what customers really want. It enables a company to shift directions with agility, altering plans inch by inch, minute by minute.

Rather than wasting time creating elaborate business plans, The Lean Startup offers entrepreneurs - in companies of all sizes - a way to test their vision continuously, to adapt and adjust before it’s too late. Ries provides a scientific approach to creating and managing successful startups in a age when companies need to innovate more than ever.

©2011 Eric Ries (P)2011 Random House

Critic reviews

"Eric has created a science where previously there was only art. A must read for every serious entrepreneur—and every manager interested in innovation." (Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz, Opsware Inc., and Netscape)

"At Asana, we've been lucky to benefit from Eric's advice firsthand; this book will enable him to help many more entrepreneurs answer the tough questions about their business." (Dustin Moskovitz, co-founder of Facebook and Asana)

"In business, a ‘lean’ enterprise is sustainable efficiency in action. Eric Ries’ revolutionary Lean Startup method will help bring your new business idea to an end result that is successful and sustainable. You’ll find innovative steps and strategies for creating and managing your own startup while learning from the real-life successes and collapses of others. This book is a must read for entrepreneurs who are truly ready to start something great!” (Ken Blanchard, coauthor of The One Minute Manager and The One Minute Entrepreneur.)

My lean reading experience

I was there till the end. however, after chapter 8 I felt things were starting to repeat themselves..

An antidote for big idea investing

This book is good because it gives entrepreneurs and Angel Investors a frame work for taking an entrepreneur'' insight/inspiration and turning it into a product or service with paying customers. As a former PE investor, I find angel investors and entrepreneurs too focussed on technology and team and not enough on sales and customer experience. By focussing on concurrent product and customer development/feedback, teams are more likely to find a solution and paying customers before they exhaust their money and credibility with investors.

Muy bueno.

Me costó terminarlo pero es genial. Poner mucha atención para no perderse. De verdad genial.

for startups? all cases mentioned are corporations

narrator often speaks in that overly polished way that is just unctuous. despite a message of creating clarity and not wasting people's time, his message is often obscured by management jargon. it's incredible how insidious language like that is, in that it still hobbled a book the very existence of which was designed to cut through the crap.
and, incredibly, almost all cases he ever mentions in the book are not of startups, but his large corporate clients who are betting on certain internal teams to maybe act like startups. the exception is his own startup, In View.
that said, for many of the times I had a nagging issue with something he said, I noticed that he often addressed that question at some point.

good read

very insightful and informative. provide good step by step guide to catalyze innovation. good read

Outstanding book

Great book, great story, many practical examples that could be applied on real work. I will use a couple of this concepts at work !

Eric knows what he is talking about

I like the overall performance in this product. Sometimes the content becomes a bit dry, and I suspect it is better in print than when listened to.

Good read

Some very good principles learnt. Occasionally a little dry the content but on the whole a very good read.

Wonderful Read

This was one of a wonderful read. I believe it will change the view of many when comes to startup and how we have try building ones.

A good start, but find a business professor

While the text consistently indicates the importance of validated learning and avoiding vanity metrics, how to undertake validated learning is often missing. I highly recommend finding a business professor to work with if you are interested in enacting the opportunities in this book.

Additionally, the greater reasons driving "lean" thinking are understated. If you would like to read the same thing but better read "Innovation and Entrepreneurship", if you would like something more actionable read "Disciplined Entrepreneurship".i assign all three books in my course on Ent. Management.