There’s no question that Eric Ries’ book The Lean Startup has helped countless entrepreneurs find success. The book’s bestseller uncovers several business lessons based on real-life research and application, including how to create a successful product using an empirical approach with minimal resources.
The Lean Startup has affected many entrepreneurs all around the world. After reading the book, I found myself constantly thinking about how I could apply the principles of The Lean Startup to my life – whether it’s in my career, personal life, or even just for day-to-day decision-making processes.
Here are ten life lessons I thought you could take away from this book and apply to your own life:
1. Failing is Fundamental to Learning
One of the most important business lessons from The Lean Startup is that it’s impossible to be successful without failing first. Ries emphasizes how crucial it is for entrepreneurs to embrace failure as a learning opportunity, not something to be afraid of or discouraged by. Making mistakes – massive ones – is inevitable when attempting to create and launch a business.
2. Learning is the Most Important Goal for an Entrepreneur
Another important point made in The Lean Startup is that entrepreneurs should always focus on learning, not money or fame. Ries writes about the concept of building a minimum viable product (MVP), which requires you to take your vision and turn it into something tangible. The goal is to create an MVP that contains only the bare-minimum features needed to get it out into the marketplace because this will allow you to get feedback from early adopters.
3. Understanding Value Starts with Validated Learning
When creating a product or service that your customers want, Ries emphasizes that you must develop a plan that is based on validated learning. This means that you must continually build and release a product, get feedback from early adopters, and make improvements based on this information. In other words, you need to learn everything there is about what your customers want before investing any significant resources into the project.
4. It’s All About Iteration
Iteration is a major part of The Lean Startup. Many companies think that building the perfect product will lead to success, but Ries says this is an incorrect assumption. Instead, he suggests building your minimum viable product and testing it on customers as quickly as possible so you can gather feedback and make adjustments before developing anything more expansive.
5. Innovation Can be Defined in Many Ways
Just like the word innovation can mean different things depending on who you ask, Ries writes about many definitions of what it means to be innovative. He teaches readers that instead of over-analyzing how your product should be innovative, you should focus on creating something useful for customers and seeing if they respond positively to it.
6. Create a Culture of Innovation
The Lean Startup doesn’t just apply to product-based businesses; Ries says you can apply these principles to all organizations, even nonprofits and government agencies. He encourages entrepreneurs and managers not to wait for your company’s vision statement because the only way innovation will happen is if you create a culture that encourages it.
7. Build-Measure-Learn
The best way to learn is to put your ideas into the marketplace, get customer feedback, and make improvements based on this information. You can apply this simple but effective business lesson to all aspects of life because it forces you to take action without hesitation.
8. Validated Learning is More Important than Financial Success
While success is obviously something to strive for, Ries makes it very clear that learning and achieving validated learning should be your primary focus as an entrepreneur because financial success can’t happen without this. He encourages entrepreneurial-minded individuals not to get caught up in the idea of getting rich but rather to focus on how your project will improve lives.
9. Think Big, Start Small, and Learn Fast
Ries emphasizes that entrepreneurs shouldn’t think too big when developing their minimum viable product because getting feedback from customers early on is important for success. He says it’s better to be the tortoise than the hare because you want to make sure the product is right before expanding it.
10. Entrepreneurship May Fail, but You’ll Learn More from Failing than Succeeding
The Lean Startup isn’t just about learning how to be an entrepreneur; Ries also wants readers to understand that entrepreneurship can fail, and that’s okay. The goal, he says, is to learn from your mistakes and keep moving forward.
Conclusion: The Lean Startup by Eric Ries
The Lean Startup is a highly influential business book that has helped entrepreneurs all over the world. With these ten life lessons in mind, you can use Ries’ advice to help guide your career or project to success by focusing on validated learning and turning it into a long-lasting company.