Running Lean — An exacting strategy for achieving a product/market fit

@ems_hodge I read a lot but one big influence in my current work is anything "systems thinking" related. A lot of my new ideas are built on "The Theory of Constraints" for which the Goal by Goldratt is the primer. I really enjoyed Nir Eyal's book Hooked and an upcoming book (not published yet) by Alan Klement on Jobs-to-be-done.

@kunalslab definitely the first - no surprise there. I got hit by an idea and thought it was so valuable that I swore everyone to secrecy. I then spent a year building with 3 others, then Friendster launched. We were building a social network, like all the others that came after, before it was even a term. But ours was private and we thought that difference would matter so we kept going for another year. Lessons learned there: - Stealth almost never works. You have to share ideas with customers. Customers don't care about your solution anyway so there's little fear there. - Being different is not enough unless it's a difference that matters.

@rywalker elaborate more! tell the story :)

@eriktorenberg heh - I wrote a blog post a while ago telling that story http://rywalker.com/ive-joined-s...

Thanks @rywalker !

Thanks @eriktorenberg! It's my pleasure.

@melissajoykong I write about this a bit in Running Lean: External funding is not market validation. It is not traction. Traction is only measured by repeatable actions your customers take that leads to future monetizable value. Unless you have your business model close to pm fit, raising money should not be cause for celebration, but a reality check that the time is ticking. Everything costs 10 times more because you to return a 10X ROI. I don't want to be downer... some businesses do have to raise money...and most need to raise money for accelerating growth. That last kind is a cause for celebration.

@andreasklinger Yes it's been a while. I think like original "lean" thinking, core values seem to have become default at startups but I still don't see evidence of rigorous enough practice. One of the biggest ideas towards proper adoption is innovation accounting. Despite the bad name, it takes lots of discipline that most startups aren't ready to put in - it seems. Tooling is getting better but not there yet. I agree more apparent progress seems to be occurring in the enterprise front. That said, my thing always has been to try and tackle the problem of raising odds of success. I continue to push more things under the lean umbrella until I'm told to stop :) 3 biggest areas of interest for me are: 1. Jobs-to-be-done thinking: It simplifies the search of problems without falling into the innovator's bias for the solution. 2. Theory of Constraints: It drives focus on the right actions that stand to deliver the greatest impact. 3. The Scientific Method: Brings more empirical learning through better processes.

Thanks @lukasfittl - 1. The basics never change. My epiphany when I wrote that book can be summed with a mind shift of thinking of the business model vs the solution as the product. That piece is still true to this day - what I now term the "innovator’s bias" (for the solution). The part that blew up beyond my expectations was the adoption of Lean Canvas and follow on questions on how best to use it model all kinds of business models. I certainly spend more time there too than I thought I would. 2. As you can imagine a book, like a large project, is never finished - only released. Scaling Lean is my attempt to address many unanswered questions that help to “scale” the concepts as both product and teams grow. The 3 biggest ones are - how to more concretely define psfit, pmfit, and scale, - how to identify riskiest assumptions systematically, and - how to practice these ideas in teams > 3 ppl

@melissajoykong It's a great question and really a question of strategy. Amazon is playing the long game and only time will tell if they are biggest dotcom success or bust. My vote is with the first. Even though they tread with loses, as a percentage these numbers are relatively small compared to the upside. They could probably be plugged if they were pushed to do so by shuffling things around a little. I'd worry a lot more about a company that solely pursues user growth at the expense of monetization for long periods of time.

@lejlahunts I've built close to a dozen products under 2 company umbrellas since 2002 - all bootstrapped without external funding. The first 7 years were very build heavy but I found how to fund them with customer funding. Then I learned that time was even more valuable than money. You can get more money but not more time. The last 5 or so years, have been very lean focused...where I have said no to more products than I have pursued.

@eriktorenberg No joke - he's one of smartest developers I've worked with. He built the first version of Lean Canvas in a few days after a 5 min conversation. You're lucky to have him. He doesn't eat ketchup though (???)

@ashmaurya Haha, the little oddities everyone has. I don't like chocolate either ;) Spark59 was an awesome time, from Lean Canvas, to Lean Stack, to USERcycle. Still looking back to it with a smile!

@paulmboyce Thank you!

@russfrushtick There's always stuff one can put into any product... but looking back I wouldn't have put anything else in. It was my best snapshot of the thinking at the time - which has become an excuse to write more future books now :)

@russfrushtick I should have turned around the question and asked you what you found missing before answering?

@eriktorenberg I don't know if it was truly unique but certainly different. I wrote a book without writing first - but teaching everything in the book through workshops. My blog was an accidental MVP for the book and the workshops are where I refined the flow of the book through slides not pages. Chapter 2 in the book is a case-study of how I applied every principle in the book to write the book - yes it's meta-recursive. But I would argue that difference made the process more fun and created a better product than taking a sabbatical in the mountains.

@shermanfarms thanks