Articles
81 articles on lean startup methodology by Ash Maurya.
What is Continuous Innovation?
As products have gone from being delivered in a box to being delivered over the Internet, there’s been a **dramatic shift in how customers consume, demand, and interact with products.**
What Startup Founders Get Wrong About Competition
When asked about competition, startup founders typically fall into two camps.
3 Hacks to Mastering Any Skill Quickly
Cultivating a learning mindset is a key skill in any field.
3 Steps for Running More Successful Pilots
Ever had a customer go cold after a sizzling start? You’ve just closed a big customer and can taste [problem/solution fit](https://www.leanfoundry.com/topics/problem-solution-fit). They’ve agr...
A 3x3x3 Perspective for getting your Vision, Strategy, and Product aligned
I’m sure you’ve run into Simon Sinek’s TED talk on the Golden Circle, where he made a case for how great leaders communicate differently — leading first with their **why** (or purpose), then descri...
A Blueprint for Understanding How People Buy Anything
There is no such thing as an impulse purchase. Behind every purchase is a string of causal events and forces.
A Lean Canvas is NOT Enough to Replace a Business Plan
Let me know if this sounds familiar… Say you have a promising new idea. To get the green light to move forward, you are often asked to write an elaborate 30-page business plan, complete with a 5-ye...
A Tale of Two Entrepreneurs
Both of them studied at the same university and got good grades, and after graduation, both worked at a high-tech startup where they quickly grew into key roles. After a few years, they both got hi...
All Those Who Wander Are Not Lost
Getting to product/market fit (aka the inflection point in the hockey-stick curve when a product's traction starts rapidly growing) is one of the most significant milestones for a startup.
Business Models vs Business Plans
**Most people hate writing business plans.**
Expose Your Constraints Before Chasing Additional Resources
We all hustle, struggle and fight to acquire more project resources. But ironically, when we have these resources in excess, we don’t become efficient. We become wasteful.
Find Better Problems Worth Solving with the Customer Forces Canvas
Inspired by the Scientific Method, the search for Problem/Solution fit starts with creating a model — specifically a business model using a Lean Canvas. On that Lean Canvas, you take your best gues...
It’s Time to Fire the Business Plan for Good
Have you ever written a Business Plan? Did you enjoy the process?
Forget Personas
_If you were a marketer at a mattress company, when is the best time to run an infomercial?_
How to Achieve Breakthrough By Embracing Your Constraints
In its early days, Southwest Airlines had to sell one of its planes or face bankruptcy. When most people get hit with a constraint of limited resources like this one, they either fall victim to the...
How to Find an Idea Whose Time Has Come
A recent [Bill Gross TED talk](https://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gross_the_single_biggest_reason_why_startups_succeed?ref=blog.leanstack.com) where he found timing to be the single most important fact...
How to Pitch Pricing Without Getting Butterflies in your Stomach
If you’re a product-oriented founder like me, you probably get a little nervous when you get to the pricing conversation during a product pitch. You’d rather defer this conversation to later (like ...
How to Systematically Prioritize and Tackle the Riskiest Assumptions in Your Business Model
When launching a new product under extreme uncertainty, it’s critical to prioritize tackling your riskiest assumptions first. While a simple enough concept to grasp, it’s ironically quite challengi...
How To Turn Your Limiting Constraints Into Seeds For Breakthrough Innovation
I spent the first couple of years as a solo founder wishing for more of everything. More time, more people, and more money so I could build more features and get more customers.
Love the Problem, Not Your Solution
I recently got asked about the most common pitfall that trips up entrepreneurs. Top on my list is: **Falling in love with your solution**. I’ve previously labeled this pre-disposition for the solut...
Nailing Release 1.0
I recently declared that I’m [moving away from MVP](https://www.practicetrumpstheory.com/p/moving-beyond-mvp) in favor of:
No Problem in Your Business Model is a Problem
A manager at Toyota is delivering a quarterly update to an executive. He’s enthusiastic because all the metrics are trending up and to the right. They shipped on time — sales and customer satisfact...
Position Against Your True Competition to Win the Customer
Most entrepreneurs never bring up their true competition during a product pitch because either they
Reorder your Chain of Beliefs with a leaner Lean Canvas
Sketching an idea on a [Lean Canvas](/tools/lean-canvas) is akin to stacking a chain of beliefs. Later links rely on earlier links, and cracks in your early links have a ripple effect. This is why ...
Say No to Product Roadmaps
Entrepreneurs need to be able to simultaneously **pitch a big long-term vision** while staying **grounded in short-term actions** to move their vision forward.
Scaling Flow in a Startup
Last year, I outlined ten work hacks I use for managing conflicting pulls on my time in a post titled: [“Achieving Flow in a Lean Startup](https://blog.leanstack.com/achieving-flow-in-a-lean-startu...
Start With Mindset
Time flies. We’re already at the 10 year anniversary of the Lean Startup. Yes, it was a little over 10 years ago that Eric Ries started sharing a series of blog posts and giving talks on a new way ...
Stop Wasting Time on Unviable Business Ideas
Too many entrepreneurs prematurely rush to launch their product, join an incubator/accelerator, or hit the pitching circuit only to realize months (or years) later that they were chasing too small ...
The 10x Product Launch
You’ve painstakingly defined and built an MVP through 100+ customer interviews. You’ve collected thousands of emails from potential prospects through a teaser page. You’re ready to launch. But…
The 7 Habits for Running Highly Effective Startup Experiments
Lean Thinking, which heavily influenced the Lean Startup, has a deliberate step before the Build step. That step is Planning. In our exuberance for action, we often don’t spend the requisite time p...
The Art of the Demo
_Me: You seem to have identified a big-enough customer problem that you have a plausible solution to (feasible)… What’s keeping you from closing customers?_
The Art of the Scientist
After the introduction of the scientific method, there was a marked increase in the pace of breakthrough discoveries. Both science and entrepreneurship operate under conditions of extreme uncertain...
The Bootstrapping Startup Operating System
Bootstrapping an idea is more relevant today than ever, but the rules have changed.
The Counterintuitive Science of Closing B2B Sales
As all B2B sales meetings went online during the pandemic, [Matt Dixon](https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewxdixon/) and [Ted McKenna](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ted-mckenna/), authors of _The Jolt...
The Different Worldviews of a Startup
In his groundbreaking book, [“All Marketers are Liars Tell Stories](http://www.amazon.com/All-Marketers-Liars-Preface-Works/dp/1591843030),” Seth Godin defines a “worldview” as the set of rules, va...
The Entrepreneur with a Thousand Faces
In _“The Hero with a Thousand Faces,”_ Joseph Cambell described a narrative pattern for the archetypical hero’s journey. Every hero story, from Luke Skywalker to Neo, follows this structure.
The GOLEAN Framework for Growth
GOLEAN? No, this isn’t some blatant battle cry for _going lean._ It’s a mnemonic for a growth framework I created for my last book: Scaling Lean — one that draws heavily on lean startup principles ...
The Myth of the Perfect Plan A
Most entrepreneurs start with a strong initial vision and a Plan A for realizing that vision. Unfortunately, most Plan A's don't work.
The Power of a Good Strategy
When Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook in 2004, he wasn’t the first to build a social networking platform. There were dozens of other social networking platforms before him — many with millions of d...
The Science of How Customers Buy Anything
A basic tenet of running lean is validating a product or feature ideally **without having to build it first**. This makes complete sense when you look at every product or feature as its own custome...
The Simple Shapes of Startups
Inspired by this short lecture by Kurt Vonnegut on “the simple shapes of stories,” I thought it would be fun to sketch a few shapes of what starting up looks like:
The True Value of Your Time
_Time is our scarcest resource. Resources like money and people can fluctuate up and down, but time only moves in one direction._
Traction is the One Metric to Rule Them All
Walk into any investor’s office with the beginnings of a hockey-stick curve, and you’ll create a Pavlovian response where they’ll sit you down and try to understand your business model.
Uncovering the Right Minimum Feature Set for Your Minimum Valuable Product (MVP)
Contrary to popular belief, an MVP (Minimum **Valuable** Product) is not a quick and dirty solution you throw over the fence at customers. It has to deliver **value** right out of the gate.
Unpacking the Innovator’s Gift
Over the last nine years, I’ve published two best-selling books: [Running Lean](https://runlean.ly/3e?ref=blog.leanstack.com) and [Scaling Lean](https://scalinglean.com/?ref=blog.leanstack.com). Bo...
Vitamins Don't Have a Triggering Event
Were you in the middle of launching a new product or startup when the pandemic hit? Like a lot of entrepreneurs, you probably hit the brakes on your project or put your new ideas on the back-burner...
VRMotion — An Invention to Innovation Case-study
It was almost 8:45 am as we pulled into the Birrfeld airstrip just outside Zurich, Switzerland. I was meeting Fabian Riesen (Fabi), who had casually offered to take me flying over the Swiss Alps th...
What is a Job-To-Be-Done (JTBD)
You’ve probably run into the jobs-to-be-done framework/theory. I did several years ago when I first stumbled into the [Milkshake Study](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfGtw2C95Ms&ref=blog.leanstac...
What is a Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
A minimum Viable Product means different things to different people so let's start with a definition.
What is a Lean Canvas?
A Lean Canvas is a 1-page [business modeling](https://www.leanfoundry.com/topics/business-modeling) tool that helps you deconstruct an idea into key assumptions or beliefs.
What is the Right Fill Order for a Lean Canvas?
A question I get a lot is: **Why isn’t the Lean Canvas laid out more logically?** Anyone that has attempted to fill one can relate. You must jump around from box to box in seemingly random order.
When and How to Set Pricing for Your Product
Pricing is one of the riskiest assumptions on the Lean Canvas (Revenue Stream).
When Do You Kickoff a (Customer) Problem Discovery Study?
As product development has become easier, the battle for attention has become harder.
Why and How to Model a Non-profit on the Lean Canvas
Several variations of the lean and business model canvases are now floating around for non-profits and social ventures. However, the lean canvas is still the best way for a non-profit to understand...
Your Product is NOT “The Product”
Entrepreneurs are typically more passionate about their solution than any other part of the business model, which, left unchecked, can become a problem. While building a product is what you do best...
How to Deliver an Elevator Pitch That Gets Anyone to Ask for More
The elevator pitch is one of four foundational pitches every founder should master.
Achieving Flow in a Startup
Eliminating waste is the fundamental principle of lean thinking.
3 Common Customer Interviewing Mistakes
At the early stages of a product, [before problem/solution fit](https://www.leanfoundry.com/topics/problem-solution-fit), customer interviews are the best (and fastest) way to learn from customers....
Bootstrapping + Lean Startup = Low-burn Startup
While bootstrapping provides a strategic roadmap for achieving sustainability through customer funding (i.e., charging customers), lean startups provide a more tactical approach to achieving those ...
Crafting Attention-Worthy Unique Value Propositions
The first battle for any product is getting noticed by customers.
Extending the Job Story to a Customer Forces Story
Customer Forces Stories are a powerful way of summarizing customer conversations during your search for [problem/solution fit](https://www.leanfoundry.com/topics/problem-solution-fit).
How to Systematically Uncover Big Problems Worth Solving
Like a good magic trick, most big ideas seem obvious in hindsight because they solved a customer struggle (or problem), that was seemingly sitting in plain view. The challenge is that we live our l...
“Lean Startup, Business Model Design, or Design Thinking?” is the Wrong Question
You don’t get a gold star for the following process but for achieving results — specifically, business model results.
Moving beyond MVP
After 14 years, I'm abandoning the MVP.
Prospecting Recipes for Conducting Problem Discovery Interviews
How do you get customers to openly talk to you during problem discovery interviews if you’re “not allowed” to pitch your solution? This is the top question I get from founders on conducting cu...
Raise Your Startup's Odds of Success By Up to 8x
Most founders set Product/Market Fit as their first significant milestone. The problem is that getting to product/market fit typically takes two years (for most products), and 80% of products never...
Stop Trying To Validate Problems
When asked to do the smallest thing to learn from customers, the first instinct of many founders is to run a survey.
The Art of Experiment Design
You run an experiment every time you release a new feature, run a marketing campaign or try a new sales method.
The Backstory Behind Customer Forces Stories
Good customer / problem discovery is key to achieving [problem/solution fit](https://www.leanfoundry.com/topics/problem-solution-fit).
What is the Right Sizing for Early Adopters?
It’s easy to see the perils of going too broad with a new product: When you try to market to everyone, you reach no one. This is why the customer segment box on the Lean Canvas is further broken in...
How to Formulate Your Unfair Advantage Strategy with a Lean Canvas
Communicating defensibility against copycats and competition is critical when pitching your [business model](https://www.leanfoundry.com/topics/business-modeling) to investors and key stakeholders.
A Systematic Roadmap to Product/Market Fit
Getting to product/market fit is considered the most significant milestone for a startup. This is often described as the inflection point in the hockey-stick curve when traction takes off.
Balancing the Conflicting Pulls on Time in a Startup
Time, like any resource, has multiple pulls. In a startup, there is a basic pull for activities outside and inside the building.
The Customer Factory
All businesses, irrespective of business model type (b2b, b2c, digital, hardware, services, etc.), share a common universal goal:
How to Use Business Model Patterns to Formulate a Starting Validation Strategy
Patterns are everywhere. We use patterns in architecture, design, software, chess, and cooking.
The Just Start Manifesto
While we may look different and speak different languages, the world is flatter than it’s ever been. We are living through a global entrepreneurial renaissance that can be witnessed through the wor...
Slow Down to Go Fast
Most entrepreneurs are understandably in a rush to get to the right side of the hockey-stick curve (aka scaling).
Start with Premium Before Freemium
The thinking goes that when launching a new product, it’s often a good idea to lower friction by giving away your product for free so you can 1️⃣ Learn from users 2️⃣ Get them to try before ...
The Customer Factory Manifesto
All businesses, irrespective of business model type (b2b, b2c, digital, hardware, services, etc.), share a common universal goal:
Traction is the Goal. Everything Else is Distraction.
What is the one thing that both investors and entrepreneurs care about? It’s growth or traction.
Why Lean Canvas versus Business Model Canvas
I often get asked why I created a different adaptation from the original Business Model Canvas by Alex Osterwalder. Lately, this question has bubbled up in frequency which is why I decided to take ...