This is awesome advice. All of the popular company-starting frameworks out there right now are popularizations of the age-old idea of de-risking. Shed risk as quickly and cheaply as you can; if you are going to fail, fail fast. But the one thing both Blank and Ries seem to gloss over is that the cheapest way to de-risk is to do it before you have a MVP, before you start doing customer discovery. Do it by knowing the industry and market and customer you're targeting. 50% of this can often be done in a few days of reading stuff you've searched on the Web. And an additional 30% of it can be done by talking to knowledgable people and asking them what they think of your idea. (The other 20% you have to learn the hard way, by doing.)
