Eric Reis defines a startup to be 'any institution designed to deliver a new product or service under extreme uncertainty' There's nothing in that definition that specifies the size of the company, the industry or the amount of funding received. Everyone wants to be the next Steve Jobs - but even Steve Jobs himself wont be able to live up to that standard (if he were still with us, I mean) Using Split-tests and cohorts will allow you to figure out which direction to take- and maybe even uncover new ideas.Ĥ) You might be an Entrepreneur and not even know it! : This bit may not appeal as much to this subreddit (since everyone here is one) - but maybe some of your friends are entrepreneurs and they don't even know it. You're better off scaling down on the quality and using that time to validate whether your audience WANTS the feature/product/service to begin with.ģ) Don't argue about effort-prioritization - Use Split-Tests & Cohorts! : Again, you need to experiment. : Don't get featuritis - and don't concern yourself too much about quality. Its crucial that we VALIDATE our assumptions before we move forward - it will save us a lot of time.Ģ) The biggest waste is building things efficiently that nobody wants at all.

We should focus on building first iteration of the minimum viable product (or feature), then Measure whether or not it yielded the expected results. Your hypothesis needs to be tested, validated/invalidated. Here are the highlights/golden nuggets of The Lean Startup by Eric Reis:ġ) Startups are essentially 'Scientific Experiments : Every idea is mere a hypothesis. We usually get together on the weekends and discuss what we learned during the week. My friends, who are also entrepreneurs don't like to read books as much - so I've been summarizing the books for them and giving them a list of key take aways. Recently, I've been reading business/startup books more often. I read a lot - it's just something I've always done.

The lean startup book review