What has going Lean with my startup taught me about Entrepreneurship
Last year around the month of August I came across the book Lean Startup by Eric Ries (yes, I was late indeed!). The efforts taken by Eric Ries in explaining the concepts of Lean Startup and structuring case studies makes you believe in the offerings he presents via the book.
“A startup is a human institution designed to create a new product or service under the condition of extreme uncertainty” — Eric Ries
So 40 pages into the book, I started implementing the Lean concepts. Over a period of next 30 days, it was all about experimentation with the new approach and learning from it. The simultaneous reading and implementation of concepts has and continues to help me learn a lot about our own process and how we can improve them.
Through this post, I will try to cover some concepts which have provided key learning for us at Phionike
Everybody is a manager
In your organization, everybody should be able to manage something. It can other people, juggling different schedule or managing themselves. Having people who can manage themselves is a boon to have. I had the opportunity to work with my team members last year over a project where we discussed the scope of work over 10–15 minutes meeting.
What followed after that was a collaborative execution of strategies, which we kept flexible at all time. My role in these involved giving people freedom. Freedom to design, develop and research whatever they were trying to implement. This for me would be an example of self-management, where a micromanagement framework only motivates all of us to innovate and become better.
Taking a leap
When you’re a startup and trying to find your way through the crowd, you will have to try out a lot of methods/process to make yourself stand out from the rest. This involves taking a risk on daily basis. I feel learning this mindset from the book helped in establishing a belief system of taking actions and learn faster. I feel taking a leap is like an art, and I still have to learn a lot about it.
Pivot or Persevere
When we try new methods, it becomes very important to understand how things are working out. Falling into the loop of the inefficiency of type can go unnoticed at times. So it becomes very important to constantly validate your process and ask, pivot or persevere?
Most of these decisions are driven strongly by measurable metrics that you will have for your company but it is possible to also apply this framework in your other work. For example, while working with one of my clients, we found a communication gap of deliverables.We restructured our deliverable process by coming up with a better sign-off process. It is now helping us have a better relationship with our clients. In the business of design and technology, sometimes hard work can get unnoticed, so fluent communication becomes a very important thing.
Minimum Viable Product(MVP)
Probably one of the most important lessons I have learned from the book. A production-ready product or not, it is important to form a loop of Build-Measure-Learn and move as quickly as possible.
The concept of MVP clearly shows a way to iterate faster without burning your too much cash or other resources in your startup. An MVP can be a validation of your idea in any form. It can be a design prototype, minimal coded prototype or even a blog post. The most important thing is, it should help you learn and steer.
Conclusion
I have learnt that no idea is perfect.People have their opinion. We can either stay in the building and discuss it in our conference rooms or go out and understand them. It is one of the quickest ways to make key decisions in any work we do and principles of the lean startup are certainly a good way to start moving.
Which is the learning that you can associate with most? I would love to hear your story.
Further Reading
