Lean startups 101

In venture capital and tech incubator circles, the concept of lean startups is all the rage. We’re fans of the idea, and think it has merit well-beyond Silicon Valley.

The basic idea behind the lean startup approach is to get a product into the hands of customers as quickly and inexpensively as possible, find out what customers think of your product, and then modify that product as needed.  The point is to find out if there’s a match between your product and what the market wants, with as little risk as possible. Here are a few lean startup tactics:

1. Design a minimum viable product.  Hold off on all the bells and whistles you’ve envisioned. Strip your design down to the bare essentials you’ll need to determine whether customers will like / use / buy your product.  By sticking with this minimum viable product, you can determine the fit between what you’ve got and what customers want faster and cheaper.

2. Develop quickly and inexpensively. Making lipsticks, t-shirts or beverages? Start with “stock “materials, like applicators or bottles, to avoid time consuming and costly production set-up. Customize later, once you’ve proven that customers want what you’ve got. Building an online community? Use a platform like Ning that’s free or at least cheap; if customers love it, you can build a custom site down the road.

3. Change on the run. It’s pretty rare for founders to dream up a winning product from the sidelines. More often, it’s necessary to make a series of modifications in reaction to the way customers react to initial offerings. That could mean changing or adding features, pricing, positioning, distribution, etc. One of the keys to doing this well is to set performance targets (we want to sell at least 1,000 units per week by the end of a three month test), measure actual results (we only reached 500 units; customer surveys showed we need to switch our pricing from subscription to a la carte) and then decide whether / how to proceed (change pricing policies).

Lean startups and bootstrapping work well together. For example, both tend to advocate getting a product to market first, and then raising capital for expansion—as opposed to raising a lot of money for design and development, which often takes longer and hampers flexibility.