When someone finds out that I am an entrepreneurship professor, they tend to either ask me to listen to their startup pitch, or else they look at me quizzically and say: “But I thought entrepreneurship was all about improvisation. How can you teach entrepreneurship?” As a result, I have heard a lot of startup pitches (last year was blockchain; this year was CBD) but I also have thought about how to answer the bigger question: what can we teach founders to make their startups more successful? Fortunately, the last decade has given me a lot of valuable lessons I can share, and these lessons come from two different sources.
What the Lean Startup Method Gets Right and Wrong
It puts a premium on customer experience, but undervalues strategic thinking.
October 21, 2019
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Summary.
The Lean Startup approach was an instant hit in Silicon Valley, as startups embraced this new experimental ethos. Indeed, the evidence strongly suggest that startups should engage in experimentation along the lines pioneered by the Lean Startup Method. But there are two problems with the Lean Startup approach: First, it pushes founders to “get out of the office” and talk to customers as quickly as possible. But the focus on getting fast feedback from customers to Minimal Viable Products makes startups prone to aim for incremental improvements, focusing on what customers want today, rather than trying to see ahead into the future. Second, while the questions Lean asks are useful — you should know who your customers are! — it doesn’t ask the most important one: what is your theory about why your company is going to win?