The Lean Startup: The Million Copy Bestseller Driving Entrepreneurs to Success

Despite being committed to a significant vision, he had done his best to launch early and iterate. Thus, he was facing a pivot or persevere moment just eight months into the life of his company. The more money, time, and creative energy that has been sunk into an idea, the harder it is to pivot.

Do consumers recognize that they have the problem you are trying to solve? If there was a solution, would they buy it? Would they buy it from us? Can we build a solution for that problem?”

This is true startup productivity: systematically figuring out the right things to build.

Only 5 percent of entrepreneurship is the big idea, the business model, the whiteboard strategizing, and the splitting up of the spoils. The other 95 percent is the gritty work that is measured by innovation accounting: product prioritization decisions, deciding which customers to target or listen to, and having the courage to subject a grand visio

More than half of the users came back to the site every single day.2 This is an example of how a company can validate its value hypothesis—that customers find the product valuable.

As you consider building your own minimum viable product, let this simple rule suffice: remove any feature, process, or effort that does not contribute directly to the learning you seek.

the broadest definition of product, one that encompasses any source of value for the people who become customers. Anything those customers experience from their interaction with a company should be considered part of that company’s product.

startups need to conduct experiments that help determine what techniques will work in their unique circumstances. For startups, the role of strategy is to help figure out the right questions to ask.

Deciding exactly how complex an MVP needs to be cannot be done formulaically. It requires judgment. Luckily, this judgment is not difficult to develop: most entrepreneurs and product development people dramatically overestimate how many features are needed in an MVP. When in doubt, simplify.