
Lean Startups aren’t Cheap Startups - peter123
http://steveblank.com/2009/11/02/lean-startups-aren%E2%80%99t-cheap-startups/
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zackattack
Excellent wisdom. I've been reading Four Steps to the Epiphany and find it
pretty confusing, however. Somebody needs to turn it into a "How to find
customers" manual and then write a companion "How to scale" manual.

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gruseom
I'm a big fan of Steve Blank. His blog is marvelous and his ideas are more
relevant and experience-based than basically anything out there. We're lucky
to have him. That being said, a rant has been building up in me for a long
time and I don't think I can resist it any longer. _What the hell_ was going
on with that book?

First, the title makes it sound like a treatise on Christian mysticism. If
you're such a great marketer, how come you can't name your own book? Second,
I've never seen such bad editing (I am not exaggerating). If I were one of the
people thanked for proofreading the book I would have either (a) asked for my
name to be deleted or (b) done my job. Third, the book is as stilted and
processy as his blog is lively and addictive: if your idea of fun is diagrams
connecting step 3a with step 4c, dig in. It reminds me of those old
photographs where (presumably) warm, funny people would get dressed up in
uncomfortable Sunday suits and stare stiffly at the camera because they
thought they were supposed to be serious. Fourth, the book doesn't connect its
ideas with other work. This diminishes its value; it would be easier to
understand if it pointed to other things and explained where it differs.
Particularly useful would have been how it differs from _Crossing the Chasm_
and the product-adoption lifecycle. As best as I can figure out, the main
difference is that it focuses on how to acquire (paying) early adopters so
that you have a chance of later hitting the mainstream. In other words, it's
about reaching the chasm in the first place. (Hey, maybe that would have been
a good title.) But even with something as basic as that, I'm left wondering if
I'm getting it right.

As I said, I'm a big fan. :)

Edit: I mean that. This stuff is so important that I wish Blank would write a
good book, in his own wonderful voice (as evidenced on the blog), to really
get it across. I volunteer to proofread.

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sblank
1\. Agree with your comments. The text was never intended for a general
audience. 2\. The "book" is actually my class notes from the Customer
Development class I teach at Haas. 3\. Students started asking for hard copies
of the notes. I sat on the board of Cafepress so as a favor, I bundled the
notes together, slapped a cover on it and put it on the cafepress.com site 4\.
When Eric Ries took my class he pointed out that I could ship the copies to
Amazon and that would give others broader access to it. Amazon wanted
something more than "these are my class notes" as a description. 5\. You can
think of the book as a $39 ripoff for class notes, or a steep discount on the
$30,000 Haas Business School tuition. 6\. The book title was a pun on my last
company, Epiphany 7\. The web site is a running commentary on the origin of
customer development, how the ideas evolved and what they mean

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gruseom
Oh man, now I feel bad for harshing on it. The something we got is infinitely
better than the nothing that was its alternative. Thanks for taking the
trouble to do the favor, and, uh, what can I say? I'll go home and re-read it.

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BobbyH
Your post and Steve's response made me realize that Steve's book was basically
a minimal viable product. Now that his buggy MVP has proved the market, he
should follow up with an improved v2.0! :-)

