A Practical Guide to The Lean Startup and Running Lean

Today, we delve into two iconic books in the startup landscape, "The Lean Startup" and "Running Lean." These guides and methodologies unlock the secrets to efficient business operations, conversion of assumptions into actionable insights, and honing your product to meet market demands. Explore the refined techniques of incremental evolution, maximizing customer engagement, and identifying the shortest route to a viable business.

But why read or re-read them when you have a quick guide you can check right here?

The Guide

Step 1: Find a problem to solve

Look for a problem that needs solving, and that you are passionate about. Immerse yourself in your passions or areas you care about to find problems.

Step 2: Validate the problem

Do some market research to understand if and how this problem is being solved today. Use tools like SEMRush or HubSpot to find keywords, behaviors, and trends for your problem space.

Step 3: Create and fill out a few Lean Canvases...

From Leanstack (or any place you choose from – just search for "Lean Canvas" and go to images - to brainstorm a few business models.

Step 4. Create more hypotheses to test and more Lean Canvas business plans...

If needed depending on your hypotheses. The goal of this step is to validate or invalidate your hypotheses by talking to users. An example of a good hypothesis is that people want to listen to books on their phones instead of reading them (Idea for Audible). The founders then talked to many users to find out if this is the case before building anything significant.

Step 5. Pick the best Lean Canvas to go with...

Which can maximize learning and success

Step 6. Identify a few potential early adopters and talk to them

You should have a rough idea of what types of people you are aiming to talk to from your market research in step 2. Find out where these people hang out online, and in person - and go there to talk to them. If that platform is working, keep at it, if not, find another place to find them.

Step 7. Create a very low-fidelity solution to solve the problem...

Ideally in days/weeks instead of months/years. This is your Minimum Viable Product or (MVP). Think NoCode and LowCode instead of hiring expensive dev shops or spending too long building your product.

Step 8. Monetize your project right away if applicable

The best way to know is with a landing page asking for funds/support or even a Kickstarter campaign, that is the best validation that you are solving a big enough problem that people are willing to pay for it.

Step 9. Launch first, then again and again...

Based on user feedback. Make every new big feature a launch, or every pivot a launch, and launch on as many platforms as you can. You can read our previous guide on this topic if you're curious.

Step 10. Talk to users about your solution...

Using Solution Interviews. These interviews are still with early adopters, but this time with your MVP from step 7 to show them. Gauge their reaction, interest level, and most importantly their commitment to paying you for your solution.

Step 11. Come up with and measure a few impactful progress metrics...

That can enable you to measure success, and avoid useless or vanity metrics. Good examples are (daily active users, length of user sessions, etc.) and bad examples are (hours spent coding, people giving you compliments on your idea, etc.).

Step 12. Engage the lean startup cycle

Keep spreading the word, talking to users to get feedback, improving your product based on feedback, and measuring success

Step 13. Pivot if needed

If success metrics stay stagnant for many weeks, adjust your Lean Canvas based on user feedback, and start again from the beginning of the Loop (Step 4). Don’t be afraid to remove or recycle what you have built.

Step 14. Understand the three engines of growth to continue progressing

1) The sticky engine of growth focuses on retaining customers and avoiding churn. 2) The viral engine of growth explains how users are bringing in new users, hence making your product go viral. 3) The paid engine of growth involves using revenue from your current customers to then acquire more customers via sales or advertising. Focus on one engine at a time and optimize it, don't try to do all three at once.

Step 15. Continue this Loop until you get to Product-Market Fit

You got this! Here are some signs that you have Product Market Fit: Your product keeps growing and very few customers leave. Customers are very happy with your product and you are starting to get profitable based on the user payments. People are referring your product to others at high rates. So many people are using your product that you are barely keeping up with server maintenance, user requests, bugs, customer service requests, etc.

Step 16. You have hit Product-Market Fit!

Congratulations, this is the hardest milestone for startups to achieve. Now you can think about how you can continue your startup legacy by improving the product, scaling it, and even contacting investors to help you. There are separate books for all of these things and a topic for another day.