Leverage the framework of visionaries to innovate, disrupt, and ultimately succeed as an entrepreneur The Lean Entrepreneur, Second Edition banishes the "Myth of the Visionary" and shows you how you can implement proven, actionable techniques to create products and disrupt existing markets on your way to entrepreneurial success. The follow-up to the New York Times bestseller, this great guide combines the concepts of customer insight, rapid experimentation, and actionable data from the Lean Startup methodology to allow individuals, teams, or even entire companies to solve problems, create value, and ramp up their vision quickly and efficiently.
The belief that innovative outliers like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates have some super-human ability to envision the future and build innovative products to meet needs that have yet to arise is a fallacy that too many fall prey to. This 'Myth of the Visionary' does nothing but get in the way of talented managers, investors, innovators, and entrepreneurs. Taking a proven, measured approach, The Lean Entrepreneur will have you engaging customers, reducing time to market and budgets, and stressing your organization's focus on the power of loyal customers to build powerhouse new products and companies. This guide will show you how to:
- Apply actionable tips and tricks from successful lean entrepreneurs with proven track records
- Leverage the Innovation Spectrum to disrupt markets and create altogether new markets
- Use minimum viable products to drive strategy and conduct efficient market testing
- Quickly develop cross-functional innovation teams to overcome typical startup roadblocks
The Lean Entrepreneur is your complete guide to getting your startup moving in the right direction quickly and hyper-efficiently.
Brant Cooper helps kickstart innovation. He helps organizations big and small move the needle. Coming from the startup world, his career includes Tumbleweed, Timestamp, WildPackets, inCode, and many others. He has experienced IPO, acquisition, rapid growth, and miserable failure. Prior to the New York Times bestselling The Lean Entrepreneur, Brant authored The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development, the first purpose-written book to discuss lean startup and customer development concepts, earning a distribution of over 50,000 copies. Through Market By Numbers, he helped develop and publish the bestselling The Lean Brand, bringing lean innovation practices to the marketing side of the house. Brant is Co-Founder and CEO of Moves the Needle, which has worked with hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs across the globe. He is an internationally sought-after keynote speaker, startup mentor, and corporate advisor, and has presented to and worked with leading companies such as Google, Qualcomm, Intuit, Capital One, GE, and Transamerica. Brant tweets at @brantcooper. He lives with (and continuously learns from) his two daughters, Riva and Eliza, near Swami's in Encinitas, California.
Patrick Vlaskovits is a New York Times bestselling author, speaker, and entrepreneur. His writing has been featured on the Harvard Business Review blog, the Wall Street Journal blog, and The Browser. Patrick routinely speaks at technology conferences nationally and internationally, including SXSW, GROW Conference, the Turing Festival, and the Lean Startup Conference. The Lean Entrepreneur is his second book. The first, The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development, is a required course text for MBA and undergrad students at universities such as the University of Chicago Booth School and Berkeley. He has also guest-lectured at Stanford and UCLA. Patrick advises multiple technology startups, and serves as a mentor for 500 Startups, a seed fund and startup accelerator. As a speaker and consultant, he counts Fortune 100 companies in his client list. For some unknown reason, Patrick holds a master's in economics from UC Santa Barbara. He lives in Austin, Texas with his family. Tweet at him @Pv.
Special Thanks ix
Foreword xv
Introduction xvii
Chapter 1: Startup Revolution 1
Bytes Eating the World 2
Connectivity 4
The Value-Creation Economy 4
Cue the Lean Startup 8
Meet the Lean Entrepreneur 9
Lean Startup and Disruption 11
Notes 11
Chapter 2: Lean into Change 13
Vision 13
Enterprise Note 18
Values 19
Culture 20
Data 20
Experimentation 22
Customer Focus 22
Organizational Structures 24
The Team 25
Big, Old, and . . . Lean? 26
Over the Horizon: A Framework 28
Work to Do 33
Notes 33
Chapter 3: All the Fish in the Sea 35
Business Models 37
Know Your Audience: Why Segmentation Matters 39
Market Segment 40
Personas: Create a Real Customer 42
Choosing a Market Segment 44
Work to Do 51
Notes 54
Chapter 4: Wading in the Value Stream 55
Articulating the Value Stream 55
About Value Streams 57
Value Stream Discovery 60
Work to Do 79
Notes 82
Chapter 5: Core Lean Entrepreneur 83
The 3 Es: Empathy, Experiments, Evidence 83
Empathy 83
Experiments 94
Evidence 110
Work to Do 116
Notes 116
Chapter 6: The Lean Journey 117
From Here to Eternity: Growth Phases 119
Phase 1: Idea Phase: This Is Gonna Be Big! 120
Phase 2: MVP for a Few: I’ve Proven That a Few People Care! 122
Phase 3: A Funnel of Many: I’ve Proven That a Lot of Similar People Care, and Some Are Gaga! 131
Phase 4: Multiple Funnels: Holy Wow, We’re Growing Like Crazy with a Bunch of Different Groups of People! 139
Phase 5: Scaling a Profitable Business Model: Shampoo, Rinse, Repeat 145
Finally, Enterprise: Large and Successful; Slow and Bureaucratic 146
Notes 148
Chapter 7: The Final Word 149
Work to Do 152
Appendix: Case Studies 155
Acknowledgments 183
Acknowledgments (1st Edition) 185
About the Authors 188
Index 193
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