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Comment by davidw | Hacker News Reader

I'm curious to have a look - I ordered mine a few weeks ago. I was a bit disappointed by Eric Ries' book - after reading "Start Small, Stay Small", I've grown even less interested in hand wavy, "big picture" business books, and want more practical advice of stuff I can do. I'm not a huge company that wants to hire Eric to help me 'get lean'. I'm one guy working alone with limited time, and really appreciate it when authors give me specific stuff I can do. The fact that he's labeling it a 'manual' gives me hope that it'll contain a lot of good stuff.

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I got mine almost 2 weeks ago. Didn't read much, I skimmed through alot of it and read around 80 pages (it really is a reference, a manual, not a textbook that you can read linearly and quickly). My first impressions were:

1) it is a pretty big book;

2) So far, its text has been easier to read than "the 4 steps to epiphany";

3) IMO, its "killer feature" is NOT that it integrates Business Model Canvas content into Customer Development Model, but that it discusses and exemplifies the application of the Customer Development Model to offline businesses as well as online ones.

For practical advice, I'd strongly recommend Nail it, Then Scale It. They go as far as including exactly call scripts / emails to send, for example.

Eric's book seemed more like marketing material for lean targeted at big cos who have no idea what it is.

I'm just discovering the lean startup methodology, and I was wondering which book (or other resource) is best for an overview of the methodology, as applied for a small startup, from a very practical point of view.

Start Small Stay Small was very close, but it did not espouse much Customer Development.

As you point out, it's not Eric Ries book. I suspect it's not Steve Blank's Manual, as it's more of a reference. Maybe the Manual has a brief overview as well ? I mean, to use it as a reference, you first need to understand the method and what to look out for.

I'd start with Nail it, Then Scale It.

Specifically for customer development, I'd check out The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development: A cheat sheet to The Four Steps to the Epiphany.

I'd recommend checking out The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development: http://custdev.com - It's a very practical guide to the first part of customer development and complimentary to Steve Blank's book and Eric Ries's Lean Startup Principles. I recommend it to every entrepreneur that I talk to (which ends up being hundreds a year!)

Start Small is not about 'Lean Startups' per se. It's more about making something that works for you, without having too much of an ideology/movement/whatever. Insomuch as he talks about customer development, it's mostly techniques to appraise a potential market.

Rob Walling (author of Start Small Stay Small) also gives away for free a PDF ebook containing many of the stuff that is also present in the book. You just have to register on his blog site http://www.softwarebyrob.com/ and you'll receive a link. Of course doing so you'll be subscribed to his newsletter (but it's part of the customer acquisition "game", no? :-))

This looks like a rip off of Ash's Maurya's Running Lean: http://www.runningleanhq.com/

Except it seems to have been published before Ash Maurya's.

Steve Blank has been in the StartUp world for decades, just check his about page: http://steveblank.com/about/

And compare it to the author you're talkin about http://www.ashmaurya.com/about/ that clearly states in his page "In late 2009, I ran into into Steve Blank’s lectures on “Customer Development” from where I followed the trail to Eric Ries’ early ideas of the Lean Startup."

I seriously doubt Ash would have ever written "Running Lean" if it weren't for Steve. The whole notion of the "lean startup" emerged partly as a result of the influence of Steve Blank's work, on Eric Ries and others. Of course it would make sense that there would be overlap between the work of Ash and Steve (and Eric and others as far as that goes) but I very much doubt that Steve's book is in any way a "ripoff" of the book Ash wrote.

Thanks for the downvotes because you kids can't read. I'm talking about the "Nail It Then Scale It" book being a copy, not "4 steps.."

> Thanks for the downvotes because you kids can't read. I'm talking about the "Nail It Then Scale It" book being a copy, not "4 steps.."

A perfect example of why it's good to quote what you're replying to. Your message was so far over to the left, and was pushed down far enough below the actual post you were replying to, that the context got lost. Scrolling down the HN page, your reply appeared to be a reply to the parent post, implying you were calling Steve's book a ripoff.

Emphatic no!

The seminal work from which Ash's book (and mine) sprung was The Four Steps to the Epiphany, published in 2005.

Just curious... what makes Eric Ries and Steve Blank successful startup founders?

I'm just not very read-up on their backgrounds, but which companies have they started and successfully built? Anyone know?

Are they currently working on any big idea now? I think it would be really interesting to see them try to apply their own theories into practice.

You can't question either Eric Ries's or Steve Blank's chops as entrepreneurs. Read this piece we did at Xconomy, which includes the story of how Steve and Eric met and influenced one another: http://www.xconomy.com/san-francisco/2011/07/06/eric-ries-th...

That's part of what made Lean Startup frustrating. I know that Ries is the 'real deal', but the book ended up feeling like empty calories to me. Some good ideas, but all kind of vague.

Nice write-up, but their history/bio still doesn't give me any proof of their success in the startup world, outside of marketing lean startup stuff to other entrepreneurs, ironically. Taking advice from failed entrepreneurs is dangerous and a waste of time, I think.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Ries

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMVU

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Blank

They are both the real deal - especially Steve Blank, who did multiple companies.

Thanks a lot, that's helpful.

I do think is Steve Blank is more legit, but not because he did multiple companies - if you worked on several venture-backed companies throughout your life but they all went nowhere, you must suck as an entrepreneur. I just looked up Epiphany and this answers my question, he founded it, did $71.5M in revenue, and it IPO'd, so Blank definitely knows what he's talking about: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epiphany,_Inc.

IMVU on the other thand had good traction and Eric Ries was VP of Engineering there, but what's happened to it since? Just looking it up on crunchbase: http://www.crunchbase.com/company/imvu - no big exit/big numbers or anything special like Epiphany?

And here's his LinkedIn profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/eries - it just doesn't show any blockbuster results as an entrepreneur, just a lot of advising/marketing/blogging.

David we're in the same boat: i've read Rob Walling's "Start small stay small" and other stuff on the net and now I'm thinkin about this Steve Blank book, hoping it will help to develop the Customer part of the project i'm thinkin about.

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