The Basics Of “Lean Startups?”
“Lean Startups” is a theory-de-jour methodology that aims for systematic startup development — a “Standard Operating Procedure” (“SOP”) for startups. There are too many references to this methodology on the internet for me to pick any particular ones; instead, I’ll give my own quick synopsis behind the lean startups “MVP-VOC-Pivot” iterative cycle:
- Startups are difficult to model by conventional method of making straightforward comparisons to other similar businesses, for the simple reason that to a greater or lesser degree a “startup” is without precedent. Certainly if you start a pizza place you have a million other pizza places as comparisons (“comps”), with a startup you have to do a lot of extrapolating from merely “related” businesses.
- In light of the above, one of the best way to model a startup is to constantly test “the product” as it’s developed against the “Voice of Customer” (“VOC”) response to each iteration of the product, the idea being to build the product based on what customers actually want, not what the company thinks the customers want.
- If you start with the idea that you don’t know the market and so have to constantly change the product — “pivot” or “iterate” it — then the “product” prior to each pivot/iteration should be as stripped down as possible, no need for extra bells and whistles since those are likely not what the customer will tell you she wants in the VOC phase. Therefore, instead of an overbuilt product, in each pivot/iteration the product should be the “Minimum Viable Product” (“MVP”), enough to use to get VOC but no more than that.
- Lean Startups is based on the idea that repeat iterations of MVP-VOC-Pivot will get a startup from its starting point product (one likely not fitted to the market) to an iterated product that will really meet market needs and, therefore, is suitable as the basis for the startup.
“Lean Startups” — Further Elaborations
I’ve been using the Lean Startups methodology for years now, and I’ve been a mentor for both the national iCorps and regional NYCRIN Lean Startups programs, as well as using it with my own companies and at the various places I consult and am an Entrepreneur in Residence (“EIR”). There are a lot of things I like about this approach; however, like anything else there’s always room for additional improvements, some of which I explore on this site, as follow:
1. Meatspace & Cyberspace & The Sheep-Goat Dating Website — I disaggregate the term “startup” into what I consider the two fundamental (and fundamentally different) kinds of startups — those in “meatspace” (the world of tangible things, like a product to treat cancer), and those in “cyberspace” (connect A to B sites), like the fanciful (I hope) Sheep-Goat Dating Website ovicap.org.
2. Storytelling — Cyberspace & Meatspace — For either kind of startup (or really for any company or endeavor) there’s a need to tell a coherent and convincing story of what the company is doing, what it’s selling, why people want its product(s), and how money gets made somehow — even if the company is a non-profit. In this post I examine how cyberstories and meatspace-stories are similar and how they’re different, and how the storytelling for each domain has to be adjusted accordingly.
3. Defining The Technology’s Outer Limits — The Lean Startup’s MVP-VOC-Pivot iterations procedure is useful, but fails to include any consideration of the reasonable limits of what the company can do, the maximum extent of the company’s “pivot landscape.” This is a huge omission, since, for example, a manufacturer of nuclear weapons can’t pivot to the children’s toys product space, and even for less extreme examples it’s important to define not only what customers want but also what you can’t make no matter if potential customers want it or not. Thus this post.
4. An Introduction To “Teamspace” — The Lean Startups methodology focuses on product iteration via the MVP-VOC-Pivot cycle, but it’s equally as applicable to team iteration, that is, an MVT-VOC-Pivot cycle, where “MVT” is “Minimum Viable Team.” I’ve spent many years working with a huge number of companies, from low to high-tech, invariably the reason for catastrophic failure is the inability of the team to grow and meet customer demand, and not the failure of technology or product. Thus this posting, where I explore the analogy between “pivotspace” for products and “teamspace” for team iteration.