How to start business/start-up? -The Lean Start-up (Summary)

The words start-up and entrepreneur always create hype among youngsters. But before starting any business you should understand that there is always a misconception among people about business and start-ups is that to start a business they need a great idea which on execution with complete hard work will make them billionaire or at least millionaire. Same as Mark Zuckerberg’s idea of Facebook, thought of Amazon in Jeff Bezos’s mind or ideas of other billion-dollar companies which have made them so. But the truth is that it’s a myth. Firstly Amazon was an online bookstore rather than an e-commerce platform. Facebook was not the first idea of Mark Zuckerberg and was a gaming site. Usually, it is not the first idea that gives success but the modification or replacement of that idea results in success. You should understand that start-up is not about working on a brilliant idea and becoming a billionaire overnight but the start-up handling of extreme uncertainties. Start-up is like an experiment where you have to test and learn continuously to get desired results faster than your competitor. Such an experiment in which we are completely unaware of the outcomes. 

Founder and CEO of Amazon Mr. Jeff Bezos once created a smartphone and launched it. But customers did not show any interest in buying his smartphone because the product was over-priced and with unnecessary specifications which customers do not want. So ultimately Jeff and his team wasted time, million dollars, and a lot of energy in creating a product with such features that nobody wanted. The reason behind telling this story is that most start-ups fail due to the same reason. In start-ups a person thinks of an idea which he likes and to make it a reality, he works very hard on all the technicalities. Invests his time, money, and energy to make such a product which no-one wants. Always remember, before making any product you should not ask yourself “whether you can build such a product or not?” But the question should be “whether you should build it or not?” Most people fail because they work on conventional management i.e. researching the market, making strategy, and then delivering a great product. This approach is good but not for start-ups because the assumption of its market to the start-up is impossible without launching the product. Start-ups cannot assume the product’s response in the market until the customers are not using their product. These reasons lead to the failure of start-ups. But the good thing is this failure can be avoided. Lean start-up methodology gives us a solution to this problem and saves valuable time and money for any start-up. This concept is based on the principle of build, measure, and learn. According to this principle, first, you should make a minimum viable product. Further on launching a trial product, you should measure customer’s reactions and responses and in the end, you should learn whether your idea is working properly or should change for a better response from customers. You should repeat this cycle unless you get the desired response for your product from the market and customers. In simple words, a minimum viable product should have 2-3 key points that you think will attract customers. Make that product in minimum money possible for testing purposes with which you can measure whether the key points are getting the desired response or not. Remember that this is not your final product and just a trial product which will be important for good feedback and will help you to learn about product and sales. After measuring responses properly, you’ll have two options

1. To pivot
2. Persevere

If your product is getting a positive response then you should persevere means you should work on the same idea and should concentrate on making that product better. But if you got a negative response then you should pivot means you should execute your idea in another way

to get the desired results. Kevin Systrom made a check-in app called burbn where there were some elements from the game Mafia Wars and an element of clicking photo. But he was a little disappointed because burbn was not getting the desired response. But after measuring and learning, he observed that people were loving the photo clicking element. After knowing this, he with his co-founder Mike Krieger took a risk of removing all other elements and keeping photo elements only and started working on making that feature better which further became a very popular app which today is known as Instagram. Similar to this, you will also have to perform various experiments to achieve the desired results. Most start-ups start and disappear after some time. Because after working very hard, when they do not get desired results either they quiet or they repeat the same mistake again and again and expect to achieve good results and eventually after wasting whole money they also disappear. These both are not the right ways and a pivot is what is needed for success. One thing you should always remember for the success of your start-up is how many pivots can you handle before running out of cash?

So to conclude, customers are king and your decisions and actions should be to make them happy and not you or your team and you cannot succeed by creating something which nobody wants. This is the summary of the book “The Lean Start-up” by Eric Ries.