with a good idea

People in large organizations are used to having everything in place: computer and IT support, cleaning services, HR services (salary payments, training, etc), etc. The sheer multiplexity of things that startup founders have to work on on top of “just running the business” is something new to many novice founders.

When you have been working in a large company for a long time, you are being trained to think in processes, hierarchical authorization and optimization of existing knowledge. When you then move to a world where you must feel comfortable with not knowing how to perform well, what direction to take and being fully responsible for one’s actions, this is often difficult for novice entrepreneurs.

In the corporate world, people are used to working from 9am to 5pm, whereas entrepreneurs are only starting at 10am and finish later. When corporate professionals are changing to this new rhythm, they dislike having to reorganize their personal lives.

In a startup, one is not paid on a regular basis, and it is difficult to predict who will be rich and who won’t. This uncertainty about financial reward is difficult for many people transitioning from “corporate” to “startup” jobs.

Everything changes. While you used to attract a bit older customer segment, these people do not order food through the internet platforms. You have had to change your menu more frequently to retain your customers and work together with the internet platforms as your channels. All of this means that you have had to become much more active on social media and had to lay off your waiters. Overall this impacted your cost and revenue structure significantly.

None of the building blocks were impacted. You just earned less, as people did not order drinks.

Your channels, your key partners and your key resources: rather than selling through your own restaurant, you now sell through internet platforms, who become key partners. As a result, you no longer have waiters.

Your channels and your key partners: rather than selling through your own restaurant, you now sell through internet platforms, who become key partners.

the vision and execution are everything

you can develop a minimum viable product through iterative build measure learn feedback loop

Minimum viable product is a thinking process in order to create the viability of your project.

success always needs to start with a good idea

You should keep an idea to yourself and speak to nobody about it

First, you need a bright idea

You need to be rich to launch a venture

In order to become a successful entrepreneur, you better drop out of school

Rely on word of mouth to lower your acquisition costs

Raise your prices

Build new partnerships to get new means

Lower your value proposition

It is precisely because of this inability to predict results of search processes in a particular time frame, or with set resources, that intrapreneurs and innovators struggle discussing with CEOs and CFOs of companies that are in exploitation mode. When engaging in search processes, one must be aware that the efficiency of this search process is not the right metric to measure success.

If search requires trial-and-error, then every error is in fact a decrease in efficiency of using resources to achieve a particular result. Error, however, is then a necessary investment to become effective.

If you would be able to have 100% resource efficiency in search processes (you engage in a particular action and you get the desired outcome), then you are either just lucky, or there was no reason to search or explore in the first place. If you know how to do something with 100% efficiency, you must have known how effort leads to results, and so you were in execution mode, not search mode.

The Lean Startup is not efficient, because it is not professional. If you don’t make perfect products, how could you ever have any outcome that can lead to success?

The Lean Startup is a way for Eric Ries to ensure more book sales. In airport book shops, Lean Manufacturing books are known as best sellers, and so he tried to trick customers in buying his book by adding the word “lean” in the title.

Toyota is known for reliable, and perfect products, with a five year guarantee on its cars. Eric Ries thought that, in order to get customers to buy your products as a startup, you also have to develop perfect products and promise excellent after sales service afterwards.

Eric Ries had several experiences where he had wasted a lot of time to develop functionally perfect software products, but for which there was no market. He figured that it was much more efficient to make imperfect products and then quickly test customer reaction so as to avoid wasted time and resources, and then to engage in continuous improvement to make the products better and better. This process of “avoiding waste”, and “continuous improvement” was exactly like lean manufacturing, and so he translated the analogy into “Lean Startup”.