A Review of the Lean Startup Book

Perhaps you've had different experiences, but the issues raised in the book are things I've encountered repeatedly in new companies, and I've repeatedly seen new companies fail for exactly the reasons the book describes.

For many of us on HN there is little new information in the book. However, we have to recognize that the concept of experimenting with an MVP is completely foreign to many entrepreneurs, and even among those who know about and pay lip service to it, they very frequently can't commit to it in practice. I've seen this issue come up time and time with both new and seasoned, successful entrepreneurs. They think they know what customers want and cling to unproven notions irrationally. They get hyper focused on unnecessary features. They delay launches over fear of launching with an "imperfect" product, and also don't recognize that their vision of perfection is unproven and frequently flawed.

In fact, as a developer, this issues have come up in every project in which I've paired with a less-than-technical stakeholder. As someone who has been very active in startup communities, my observation has been that the tendencies the book intends to fight are rampant among non-technical founders.

I'm happy this book exists, because it's finally an easily digestible introduction to some baseline concepts that many entrepreneurs have a difficult time understanding and putting into practice.

The concrete things to do are build, measure, iterate. I think the case studies in the book are extremely helpful to entrepreneurs. I think you need to have some entrepreneurial experience to get much out of it though. Until you've run into some of the problems that the lean startup proposes to solve, you'll probably find the concepts too abstract.

If you're looking for a book to take you from step 1 to the end of building a successful, profitable business, you'll be looking for the rest of your life. There are far too many variables to create a completely replicable business. Instead, it's better to know what things to look for going in, and have a framework in place that makes it easy for you to see if you're on the right track. I think Eric's book does a great job of showing that side of things.

If you're looking for additional reading on the topic, you might find '4 Step to the Epiphany' worth reading. 'Business Model Generation' also gives some additional tools. You won't find anything (worth reading) that gives you step-by-step instructions, but there's enough literature out there on the Lean Startup methodologies that you should have enough to get started.

From my perspective, it seems that you're taking too harsh a stance on this, of course though, you're entitled to your opinions. I believe though, that Mr. Ries is justified in calling this a movement, because of the pockets of people who have not only adopted these practices, but have built communities supporting the others' adoption as well. I find it especially notable that they're organizing and meeting completely separate from any urging from the author.

Regarding the substance of the book, from my perspective, I feel that the one requirement for a book like this is met. This would be enough structured advice and strategy to provide a startup founder with concepts to act upon, and improve their odds of success. As a founder myself, that's all I could want from a book, if I thought it would improve my odds by one half of a percent, I'd still buy it. All things considered, my greatest gains have been through the Lean community, not materials, but as an introduction, I'm inclined to believe that it's suffices for those new to the concept, and as a refresher, it's sufficient as well. (Again you are entitled to you're opinion, this is simply my differing perspective)

Regarding the pretentiousness of the author's grammar, I wasn't bothered and hadn't considered the implications of the capitalization or phrasing, due to my focus on the concepts inside book.

I'm currently a 100 pages into TLS. If anything, Ries has attempted to bring more scientific process to a historically religious field that achieves failure (successfully, faithfully, and rigorously executing a plan that turns out to be flawed) much too often. I would say he is trying to form a common language entrepreneurs can use to think effectively about entrepreneurism.