

A Review of the Lean Startup Book - mwbiz
http://www.w2lessons.com/2011/10/lean-startup-book-reviewed.html

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davidw
> For those expecting a detailed step-by-step roadmap of the Lean Startup,
> you're likely to be disappointed. The subject is simply too large to be
> covered in one book, and many of the individual concepts have already been
> covered in other sources (Eric does a great job of suggesting further
> reading).

This book makes my cynic sense tingle.

Anyone have a list of the further reading, because what I'm interested in are
concrete things to do, not "high-level" concepts.

> Eric has done a great job of providing examples of the Lean Startup in the
> context of large organizations such as Intuit and IGN, and devotes the last
> few chapters of the book to this very topic

I think big companies are the target market for his book. He would like to
sell his consulting services to them.

Nothing wrong with that - he seems like a really bright guy with a lot of good
ideas, who does indeed know his stuff, and could provide a lot of value to
companies. He also "walked the walk", having a successful company of his own.
It's just that I don't know if real startups will derive that much value from
the book, from what I've read of it.

Here's the top review for it on Amazon:

[http://www.amazon.com/review/R3287ICLQ9STI3/ref=cm_cr_dp_per...](http://www.amazon.com/review/R3287ICLQ9STI3/ref=cm_cr_dp_perm?ie=UTF8&ASIN=0307887898&nodeID=283155&tag=&linkCode=)

Not entirely positive...

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viscanti
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.

~~~
davidw
It's obviously impossible to provide a 'template' book that "walks you through
it". If it were that simple, everyone would be doing it.

I've read plenty of business books, and most of them tend towards the "few big
ideas, expanded to fill a book", and I'm getting the impression this one may
fit that mold.

Rob Walling's (honest, I'm not paid to promote it:-) Start Small, Stay Small,
gives you a bunch of very practical tools and numbers to use to work on a
small startup, and is my new benchmark for this kind of book.

It's easy to write "build, measure, iterate". What kinds of useful details
does Ries go into about those, though?

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drp
This book was unreadably pretentious. Constantly capitalizing "Lean Startup
Movement" (and for that matter, using the word "movement") makes it sound like
some sort of religion.

Readers looking for something substantive or even thought provoking will be
thoroughly disappointed.

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breathesalt
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.

~~~
davidw
A genuinely scientific process would control for all variables, something that
seems exceedingly difficult to do with a real startup.

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chrisabruce
If you still confused, go read Running Lean (www.runningleanhq.com). A very
concise and step-by-step approach.

