Top 5 things to Collect from “The Lean Start up” by Eric Ries

Dear reader, Imagine that you in those disaster type movies where you are driving an open jeep and the bridge or the freeway you are on is shaking like you are in an earthquake.

You must drive and reach your destination to save the day. Sounds quite intimidating, right? That driving a start-up to success is

Now, I will assume that you are an entrepreneur or thinking of becoming one that’s why you are here.

So, I will not beat around the bush and try to crunch the whole book in to five top points which I have collected from reading this book.

One caveat is that these are my pebbles I have collected; You might have a different perspective, so after going through the following points, I would suggest that you read it once.

A Start-Up Requires a Minimal Viable Product in a Sustainable Business Model

You should test your minimal viable product, which is like just bare bones of your product in a controlled group and test whether it is sustainable.

Can it keep on getting new customers while you keep on making profits from the existing ones?

The minimal viable product will also help you test your growth hypothesis in a small controlled group before you jump into the sea.

Think it like a soft launch with half price for a select base of customers to test your menu in a new restaurant scenario.

You need to build, measure, and learn with a minimum cost footprint.

Testing features that you add to your minimal viable product in a controlled group is essential.

A/B split testing this way will let you learn about the unnecessary features and with a minimum cost footprint.

Pivoting is not a Taboo

These meetings are a life line of any start-up because you past data to rely on. You only have the present and the future.

So you need to take an honest hard look at all the data collected and map it to your revenue streams.

Take a decision on your core target audience and the main sales channel so you don’t turn into a zombie

Focus on One Growth Channel

There are two major division here, paid and none paid.

In the paid growth channel you have to take care that your Cost per customer acquisition is not lower than your revenue from your customer’s life time.

Non-paid category, you empower the customer and engage with them in such a way that he or she themselves becomes the brand advocate. And their word of mouth brings in a new customer.

Eventually you will end up doing both, but when you are starting, it is easier to concentrate and maximise utility of one channel driving ROI efficiency.

Stay Clear from “feel good” Metrics

There are some metrics which looks good on paper and makes you feel good but does not help you pay the bills, always stay away from them.

Imagine a PR event where you got an accidental celebrity exposure which brought you some good media footage.

It led to a jump in Facebook and Instagram followers and fans.

It looks good and feels good, but you need to ask yourself, is it leading to customer acquisition?

If not then, please look at that as a metric of success.

Neither the amount of hours, nor milestones you have achieved in the product development matters if they are not corroborating to customer acquisition.

You need to define your core metrics. Do a Cohort analysis and see what is leading to the growth or degrowth.

what is that oddity in behaviour of past customer to the new customer which is leading to these phenomena and how can you capitalize on it?

If you ask me what is the key message that “Eric Ries” tried to deliver in this book “The Lean Start up” then it is

“start-ups should use a semi-scientific approach to test their core assumptions and then build a sustainable business model on the validated hypotheses. They should develop product prototypes quickly and then continuously refine them by gathering customer feedback and going through,”

If you want me to review a specific book, please post a comment or mail me. Will try to read it as soon as possible.

Hope this post helps you in your future endeavour.