LeanStartup& Customer Development

An Introduction

ThiyagaRajan Mtwitter.com/mtrajan

Currently – Founder - Hano (IntuitLabs), Fellow @ iSPIRT,

Previously – Sr. Product Manager, Innovation Leader (Intuit), Entrepreneur (Mobile),

Engineer

Communities – LeanMantra, MoMoB.in, ProductConclave.in

Story 1 – What games will work for Indian Audience ?

Story 2 – Offline vs Online consumer behaviour in crafts

Why LeanStartup ?

Saves most precious resources for entrepreneur

Time

"A startup is a human institution designed to

discover & create a business under

conditions of extreme uncertainty"- Steve Blank

Risk – Known Unknown

A treacherous expedition through a previously

travelled path

Uncertainty - Unknown Unknown

To boldly go where no man has gone before

Discovering Unchartered Territories

Lean Startup

Documented best practices to

traverse with new ideas

Documented by

Eric Ries

Steve BlankAsh Maurya

Tristan CromerSean Murphy

Rammohan

Natwar

Arvi

Foundation laidby Closer home

Key tenet

Eliminating unknowns about

customer/

market before anything

increases the odds of success

LeanStartup Provides

Mindset

Toolset

Motto

Product Startup Stages

LeanStartup Mindset

Learn before you execute

Toolset – MVP (Minimum Viable Product)

Debug before you build

LeanStartup Motto

Minimize cycle

time

Startup Big Business

IdeaProblem/Solution Fit

User/Experience Fit

Product/Market Fit

Business Model/Growth Fit

Uncertainty Decreases

Stages

Risk Decreases

DOING LEAN IS NOT EASY

Change habits

Question everything including the idea

Psychologically Certainty, Intellectual Uncertainty

“A true scientist believes in a model/theory enough to continue to be motivated to work on it

but questions it when the observations shows differently”

- Richard D Hamming

Funding for learning vsgoals

You don’t get funding for explicitly stating a learning goal in your pitch to a VC

When not to use Lean

New Inventions

10x year vision

Problems well known ( ex:

cancer)

HOW TO GET STARTED

Start with a problem statement

If you have an idea

Dissect the Idea Anatomy

Vision ?

Problem ?

Solution ?

Beneficiary ?

List your guesses

Make a list of unknowns

Rank based on negative impact of these assumptions

Create MVP, Frame Experiment to remove assumptions in the ranked

order

Learn & Go Forward

Quick MVP Primer

Coined by Frank Robinson

smallest possible experiment to test a specific hypothesis, all

the way up to the tangible realization of a product vision

Things to keep in mind (MVP)

• Every idea has a different MVP– B2C

– SMB

– B2B

– Mobile

– Web

– Physical Products

Each take different shape & form

Things to keep in mind (MVP)

• Is not a stripped version of the product

• It is a customer risk reduction tool for customer

• Can also be thought as your idea debugger

• At very first level represents value proposition rendered in some form that target customer can experience and react to.

MVP Fidelity

Extra Slide –Dissecting Ideas(Platform version)

• Value and Growth Hypothesis seem mixed.

• Separate side value hypothesis but should include end to end interaction. – Façade one side to simplify and seed

• Even manually if needed

– Trust is super critical for liquidity– Curation is another important

•

To Recap 3 Lean Mantras

• Riskiest Assumption ?

• Document Expected Before, Measure Observed Actual

• Deep understanding of customer world backed by facts

QUESTIONS

Glossary

• MVP – Minimum that needs to be built to complete learning about an important assumption

• Pivot – Vision is the same, change in Strategy

• Rivot – Different from Pivot where even the idea changes

• Hypothesis – Verifiable statement often stated in quantitative terms

• Metrics – Measure of change expressed in unit.

• Validated Learning – Learning that is backed by demonstrable fact