Lean Startups suck. Here are 10 reasons why… | Funding Startups (& other impossibilities) Eric Ries’ 2011 book “The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses” has garnered lots of attention, and indeed plenty of favourable reviews. He’s a thoughtful guy, who has been gradually building up interest in his “Lean Startup” ideas over the last few years: if you haven’t really heard of it, it’s basically an abstract conceptual toolkit aimed at very young companies that offers plenty of sensible-sounding advice, with very little to obviously disagree with.
But even so, I think that Lean Startups still suck. And here are ten big reasons why:- (1) The “Lean Startup” approach is not a science. In fact, even though much of it is couched in terms such as “empirical” and “hypothesis”, it’s not even properly scientific. What it offers is a load of consulting-style models mixed in with contemporary truisms about business presented as hypotheses, which Ries hopes you will then go out and test for yourself. Why? Like this: Lean Medical Device Startup: Test Your Problem Hypothesis | Jay Caplan on Medical Devices. Image by State Library and Archives of Florida via Flickr Having trouble getting your medical device startup funded? Most likely, you have picked the wrong problem to solve. Think about it this way: When you launch a new medical device, you are asking physicians, hospitals, nurses and patients to change medical practice.
That’s a big deal. What does ‘testing your problem hypothesis’ mean? Testing the problem hypothesis means gathering external data from early adopters, to verify the severity and frequency-of-occurrence of the problem. Steve Blank tells of his experience at super-computing company Ardent: I had needed to ask customers four simple questions. You need to do the same thing. Let’s use a hypothetical example of a startup making a biodegradeable coronary stent. Ask your early adopters if they see this as a significant problem today, and if so, ask they why it’s significant. Ask your early adopters if they are dissatisfied with their current problem management, and why?