I already have a copy and actually have it right by my laptop as I type this into the wee morning. The book is fantastic so far and I haven't been able to put it down. I'm not reading it in a linear fashion but treating it like a reference book. It's literally a tool I've been able to put into action immediately. The book has a level of rigour to it that I really appreciate.<p>For instance, we're all familiar with the concept of runway on Hacker News right? How many of us think it's the amount of time that we have left or money left in the bank? Ries writes this on the subject:<p>"The true measure of runway is how many pivots a startup has left: the number of opportunities it has to make a fundamental change to its business strategy. Measuring runway through the lens of pivots rather than that of time suggests another way to extend that runway: get to each pivot faster."<p>How many entrepreneurs feel like they're barrelling down the runway and just crossing their fingers that something's going to change? "Apple will feature my iPhone app and I'll get a thousand users, I can just feel it!" Or, "I'm sure we can just get some angel funding, it's a hot market right now."<p>With Ries' view of the runway, you can literally rely on Pivotal Tracker to show you whether you're extending your runway or shortening it, and that's damn more effective than praying/crossing fingers/refreshing Google Analytics every half hour to see if your product has gone viral, etc.<p>EDIT: The book of course goes into when you should/shouldn't cut costs to extend runway and when you should pivot faster. It also explains what it means to pivot faster (e.g., validate your assumptions more quickly, not necessarily code features faster). I just wanted to clarify that given my PT remark above.
What I'm curious is how much practical counsel it has. I'm a huge fan of Rob Walling's "Start Small, Stay Small" because it is just overflowing with actual, concrete advice. One example is that he comes out and gives you some actual numbers for product prices.<p>A lot of "great business books", like Crossing the Chasm, on the other hand, can be fairly easily summed up in a few pages, even if the ideas are certainly good ones.<p>I'll probably get it anyway because I'm a sucker for business books, but honestly with many of them you're not missing anything if you read the summary.
The Lean Startup model works because it's rooted in evolution. Mutations are made and tested and the weaker one dies off. Biology has been testing it for much longer than we have been creating businesses.<p>We're starting to realize that you can't guess and strategize for future occurances, you just have to try them out and react accordingly. You have to get a little bit better one day at a time and not just think about how you great you want it to be.<p>That's the biggest hurdle with trying to change the world, we spend too much time thinking and arguing over what's better while key opportunities are passing us by every day.
Next up: Get your certification as a Lean Startup pivoteer, Lean Startup domain expert or Lean Startup MVP (yes, even you can be the product!).<p>Certification consists of a 4 hour workshop starting at only $4200.<p>Disclaimer: Lunch not included, though you can split-test dishes at the Minimum Viable Café at competitive, pivoted, market-driven, customer-verified, inflation-adjusted price models, with guaranteed* radical results to your entreprenurial execution capabilities.<p>* not guaranteed.
Can't wait to get this. Got to see the startups at Lean Startup Machine London on Sunday and was interesting to see them follow the lean startup culture.
Got the book pre-launch thanks to Flashpoint[1] and read it cover to cover. It crystallized a lot of "gut instincts" I had had into a complete, coherent set of tools and answered many many questions we had spent hours pondering as a team.<p>Got my pre-ordered copy the next day and gave it to our first hire and bought 3 more copies for the senior guys on my team.<p>Get it and read it, it's worth the time.<p>[1] <a href="http://flashpoint.gatech.edu" rel="nofollow">http://flashpoint.gatech.edu</a>