According to Wikipedia, “Lean startup is a method for developing businesses and products” . The brain behind this business development strategy is Silicon Valley entrepreneur, Eric Ries. The lean method proposes that startups invest their time into tentatively adapting their products or services to suit the needs of their customers in order to minimize risk of failure and evade the necessitation for huge amounts of start-up fund and crashes.
Startups previously followed the business plan and proposal method in order to succeed. Thus, all business entrepreneurs who want to launch business startup had to craft an outstanding business plan, and pitch to prospective investors. They had to get like-minded players to work with them, market the product and make good sales in order to succeed. Luckily, with the introduction of lean startup methodology, you don’t have to go through unnecessary hassles as a startup founder.
Lean startup methodology makes the development and sustenance of a startup less hazardous and more successful. If you are in the process of introducing a business, the lean process is a handy tool in achieving success within a short period of time.
The lean startup advocates conducting business tests against detailed business planning. It favors real time feedback from customers over business instinct. Of course what could be more appropriate and apt than the feedback gotten from consumers and prospective customers of your startup goods or businesses? Intuition and innovation is good; but if it doesn’t tarry with what people actually need, no matter how great it is, sooner or later it is bound to fail.
Lean startups, therefore, follow the following basic standards:
Writing a business model canvas
This model emphasizes putting down your business idea not as a perfect business plan but as a collection of untested hypotheses which are essentially, excellent presumptions. Thus, the entrepreneurs build on the hypothesis, develop and make adjustments till it finally gets to the model that is broadly accepted by customers.
Getting the customers involved
Instead of spending huge resources and time developing a product that the customers may not particularly like, lean model advocates getting the customers involved in the shaping and reshaping of the product till a final product that is broadly accepted is developed.
Embarking on agile development
This form of business development dwells more on developing a product in line with customers’ real-time problems and needs rather than making assumptions of what the customers’ needs are. This approach eliminates huge waste of time and fund. It gets the product developed bit by bit through repeated adaptation.
In summary
A lot of high-tech companies today credit their successes to the lean methodology. The over goal is to come out with a minimum viable product (MVP), an acceptable base from which a product or business idea can be built upon, a proponent of continuous improvement; ensuring businesses evolve with the times.
