Little Bets

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42 pointsgrellas3 comments

Am I the only one who sees a direct connection between little bets and the lean startup movement? When you test your assumptions you are making a series of small bets. When you build a minimum viable product that is in effect making a small bet.

Yeah, that's it! I just read Little Bets today. Actually, I was talking to somebody about lean startups this afternoon and I found that "make little bets" is a better way of expressing the lean startup approach than "test your assumptions".

The book itself doesn't break new ground, so much as it synthesizes a lot of lean startup principles and gives some good anecdotes, some of which I hadn't read before (e.g. Gehry's architecture approach). It's a good read, I enjoyed it. Until Eric Ries' book comes out, it's actually the book I'd give people to teach them what a lean startup is.

We have been preaching little bets for many years. The key is to make many small bets and then bet heavily when you truly believe.

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