Tag Archives: Startup

Eric Ries: “The Lean Startup”

I stumbled over this when reading a German article about the Visual Studio ALM Days 2011. Eric Ries basically makes the argument that startups, like any company, need management; you cannot expect to succeed without it. The key point, though, is that a special flavor of management is needed, which is tailored to the specifics of startup companies.

When looking at the reviews at Amazon, it becomes apparent that the author has hit a nerve. Although not all of them are really enthusiastic, already their sheer number (142 as of this writing) is interesting. I will not repeat things here but provide a few of my thoughts:

  • First of all, I was reading this not from the perspective of someone who works for a startup or wants to create one any time soon. Instead my background is on distributed systems working for a well-established software company. So the aspect of how to change innovation within an existing organization was the interesting part for me.
  • The key aspect I took away was that in many, many cases it is better to start building something quickly, fully accepting that the initial solution is far from perfect, and get feedback fast. This also coincides with my observation that most people have great difficulty to really grasp and understand something really new. Instead of spending much time on slides, just do a mock-up or prototype and some screenshots and all your discussions will be much smoother.
  • If you expect checklists and concrete advice for your particular situation, you will probably be disappointed. I would argue, however, that the book’s approach to tell you how to think is certainly better than to have a one-size-fits-all list of things to check off.

Overall I enjoyed the reading and fell that it has expanded my way of thinking. Also, I found quite a few parallels (e.g. with agile software development) and this reiteration has helped to “persist” things in my mind.