Running Lean
Ash Maurya book on Lean Startup process. 3rd edition ISBN:1098108779 https://www.leanfoundry.com/books/running-lean
- orig 2012 ISBN:1449305172
2022 Table of Contents
Introduction
- A Tale of Two Entrepreneurs
- One Year Ago…
- Off to the Races
- Six Months Later
- Catch-22
- A Traction-First Approach Is the New Way Forward
- What Determines Success Isn’t Differing Skill Sets But Differing Mindsets
- The Stakes Are Much Higher This Time
- Speed of Learning Is the New Unfair Advantage
- Succeeding in the New World Requires New Mindsets
- You Can’t Afford to Wait for an Idea Whose Time Has Come
- Steve Learns About Minimum Viable Products
- Don’t Start with an MVP
- There Is a Systematic Approach to Entrepreneurship
- About Me
- How This Book Is Organized
- Part I: Design
- Part II: Validation
- Part III: Growth
- Is This Book for You?
- Does It Work for Services and Physical Products?
- Practice Trumps Theory
I. Design
- 1. Deconstruct Your Idea on a Lean Canvas
- Sketching Your First Lean Canvas
- Customer Segments
- Problem
- Unique Value Proposition
- Solution
- Channels
- Revenue Streams and Cost Structure
- Key Metrics
- Unfair Advantage
- Refining Your Lean Canvas
- So, How Do You Avoid the Goldilocks Problem?
- How Do You Know When to Split Your Lean Canvas?
- Steve Splits His Big Idea Canvas into Specific Variants
- What’s Next?
- 2. Stress Test Your Idea for Desirability
- Defining Better
- Our Innovator’s Bias Gets in the Way
- Meet the Innovator’s Gift
- Unpacking the Innovator’s Gift
- Steve Challenges the Innovator’s Gift
- Using the Innovator’s Gift to Stress Test Your Idea for Desirability
- Customer Segments: Keep It Simple
- Early Adopters: Forget Personas
- Existing Alternatives: Transcend Category (competition)
- Problems: What’s Broken with the Old Way?
- UVP: How Will You Cause a Switch? (competition)
- Steve Realizes He Has a Hammer Problem
- 3. Stress Test Your Idea for Viability
- Don’t Create a Financial Forecast; Use a Fermi Estimate Instead (Fermi estimation)
- What Is Traction?
- Welcome to the Customer Factory
- Testing the Viability of Your Idea Using a Fermi Estimate
- Define a Target Throughput Goal
- Test Whether Your Idea Can Deliver Your Target Throughput Goal (see Rapid Viability Test)
- Revise Your Goal or Fix Your Business Model
- Running a Fermi Estimate on Your Idea
- Steve Reviews His Business Models with Mary
- 4. Stress Test Your Idea for Feasibility
- Charting a Traction Ramp
- Steve Charts His Traction Roadmap
- Formulating a Now-Next-Later Rollout Plan
- Stage 1: Now—Problem/Solution Fit
- Stage 2: Next—Product/Market Fit
- Stage 3: Later—Scale
- Steve Gets a Lesson on Right Action, Right Time
- Steve Learns About Wizard-of-Oz MVPs
- Steve Formulates His Now-Next-Later Rollout Plan
- 5. Communicate Your Idea Clearly and Concisely
- What’s Your Elevator Pitch?
- Outlining Your Elevator Pitch
- The Different Worldviews of an Idea
- The Investor Worldview
- The Customer Worldview
- The Advisor Worldview
- Delivering Your Business Model Pitch
- The 10-Slide Business Model Pitch Deck
- Desirability
- Viability
- Feasibility
- Steve Shares His Business Model Pitch with Others
II. Validation
- 6. Validate Your Idea Using 90-Day Cycles
- The 90-Day Cycle
- A Typical 90-Day Cycle
- Getting Ready for Your First 90-Day Cycle
- Assemble the Right Team
- Establish a Regular Reporting Cadence
- Seven Habits for Highly Effective Experiments
- 1. Declare Your Expected Outcomes Upfront
- 2. Make Declaring Outcomes a Team Sport
- 3. Emphasize Estimation, Not Precision
- 4. Measure Actions, Not Words
- 5. Turn Your Assumptions into Falsifiable Hypotheses
- 6. Time-Box Your Experiments
- 7. Always Use a Control Group
- Steve Establishes an External Accountability Structure
- 7. Kick Off Your First 90-Day Cycle
- Steve Calls a 90-Day Cycle Kickoff Meeting
- The Problem/Solution Fit Playbook
- Customers Don’t Buy Products, They Buy a Promise of Something Better
- How to Make a Promise of Better
- When Are You Done with Problem/Solution Fit?
- Steve Calls a 90-Day Cycle Planning Meeting
- The Mafia Offer Campaign
- Building a Mafia Offer
- Running a Mafia Offer Campaign
- When to Use a Mafia Offer Campaign
- Steve Tries Taking a Shortcut
- Mary Bursts Steve’s Bubble (Again)
- No Surveys or Focus Groups, Please
- Are Surveys Good for Anything?
- Preemptive Strikes and Other Objections (or Why I Don’t Need to Interview Customers)
- 8. Understand Your Customers Better Than They Do
- The Problem with Problems
- Case Study: Using Problem Discovery Interviews to Drive New Home Sales
- Focus on the Bigger Context: The Job-to-be-Done
- Case Study: Using Problem Discovery Interviews to Build Better Drill Bits
- Finding the Bigger Context
- Scoping the Bigger Context
- Diving Deeper into a Bigger, More Specific Context
- Running a Problem Discovery Sprint
- Broad-Match Versus Narrow-Match Problem Discovery Sprints
- Finding Prospects
- Steve Kicks Off the First Problem Discovery Sprint
- Conducting Interviews
- Steve Creates a Meta-Script for His Interviews
- Capturing Insights
- Steve Reviews the Results of the Broad-Match Problem Discovery Sprint
- When Are You Done with Problem Discovery?
- The Altverse Team Uncovers Several Additional Jobs-to-be-Done
- 9. Design Your Solution to Cause a Switch
- Steve Learns About the Concierge MVP
- Running a Solution Design Sprint
- Addressing Desirability
- Addressing Viability
- Addressing Feasibility
- The 5 P’s of MVP
- Steve Takes a Stab at the 5 P’s of MVP
- 10. Deliver a Mafia Offer Your Customers Cannot Refuse
- Case Study: The iPad Mafia Offer
- Running an Offer Delivery Sprint
- Assembling Your Offer
- Define the Characters in Your Customer Story Pitch
- Outline the Structure of Your Customer Story Pitch
- Steve Shares His Customer Story Pitch Outline with the Team
- Delivering Your Offer
- Optimizing Your Offer
- Measure Your Customer Factory Metrics Weekly
- Identify Your Key Constraint
- Formulate Ways of Breaking the Constraint
- Steve Meets with the Team to Review the Results of Their First Offer Delivery Sprint
- When Are You Done with Offer Delivery?
- 11. Run a 90-Day Cycle Review
- Steve Calls a Pre-Review Meeting Just with Mary
- Preparing for the Meeting
- Collect/Update Artifacts
- Assemble a Progress Report Pitch Deck
- Running the Meeting
- Steve Calls a 90-Day Cycle Review Meeting
III. Growth
- 12. Get Ready to Launch
- The Altverse Team Prepare for Launch
- Keep Your Customer Factory Running
- Look for Ways to Automate Your Customer Factory
- Race to Value Delivery
- Extend Your Customer Factory Metrics Dashboard
- Roll Out Your MVP in Batches
- The Altverse Team Launch Their Concierge MVP
- 13. Make Happy Customers
- The Altverse Team Learns About Behavior Design
- The Happy Customer Loop
- Don’t Be a Feature Pusher
- Implement an 80/20 Rule
- Prevent a Switch
- Outlearn the Competition
- Reduce Friction
- Learn the Science of Habits
- Chart a Customer Progress Roadmap
- Trigger Your Customers
- Help Your Customers Make Progress
- Reinforce Progress
- The Altverse Team Calls a 90-Day Cycle Review Meeting
- 14. Find Your Growth Rocket
- The Altverse Team Learns About Growth Rockets
- The Rocket Ship Growth Model
- Launching Rocket Ships
- The Three Types of Growth Loops
- The Revenue Growth Loop
- The Retention Growth Loop
- The Referral Growth Loop
- Can You Have Multiple Growth Rockets?
- Finding Your Primary Growth Rocket
- Short-Listing Growth Rocket Candidates
- Validating Your Growth Rocket
- Optimizing Your Growth Rocket
- Steve Makes Mary an Offer She Can’t Refuse
15. Epilogue
- The BOOTSTART Manifesto
- 1. Entrepreneurs Are Everywhere
- 2. The Persona of the Garage Entrepreneur Has Changed
- 3. There Is No Better Time to Start
- 4. Most Products Still Fail
- 5. A Dozen Reasons Why Products Fail
- 6. The Number One Reason Why Products Fail
- 7. The Number Two Reason Why Products Fail
- 8. You Don’t Need Permission to Start
- 9. Love the Problem, Not Your Solution
- 10. Don’t Write a Business Plan
- 11. Your Business Model Is the Product
- 12. Focus on Time, Not Timing
- 13. Not Acceleration, but Deceleration
- 14. Not Faux Validation, but Traction
- 15. Remove Failure from Your Vocabulary
- 16. It’s Time to Act on Your Big Idea
- References and Further Reading
His 2012 process
- do your Lean Canvas with minimal interviewing - actually, sketch out multiple variations, pick one that seems most promising (market segment with greatest pain or easiest-to-reach)
- has bit on crafting Unique Value Proposition, to be used on Splash Page - he aims for maybe 2 sentences
- learn from Ries And Trout
- target your Early Adopter segment
- focus on finished-story-benefits
- has bit on crafting Unique Value Proposition, to be used on Splash Page - he aims for maybe 2 sentences
- do Splash Page (he calls it Landing Page) site to test Sales Channel-s and generate prospects
- only mentioning problem, not solution (?)
- pick product name
- "Coming Soon" is ok to include
- link to Social Media and blog
- key channel will be Content Marketing
- collect email addresses and analytics
- do Problem Interviews
- build demo (ProtoType)
- do Solution Interviews
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