Chapter 15. Conclusion
Congratulations! We’re done.
What’s Next?
I believe that the life of any startup can be divided into two parts: before product/market fit (call this “BPMF”) and after product/market fit (“APMF”).
—Marc Andreessen, “The Pmarca Guide to Startups”
Life After Product/Market Fit
Getting to product/market fit is the first significant milestone of a startup. At this stage, some level of success is almost guaranteed and your focus can now shift from learning to scaling (see Figure 15-1).
Along with continually tuning and resetting your engine of growth to meet customer adoption challenges as you attempt to “cross the chasm” between early adopters and mainstream customers,[25] you will inevitably also be faced with new challenges as you grow your company.
Every process works well until you add people.
The key is to build a continuous learning culture of experimenters versus specialists, where it’s everyone’s job to be accountable toward creating and capturing customer value.
The Toyota style is not to create results by working hard. It is a system that says there is no limit to people’s creativity. People don’t go to Toyota to “work,” they go there to “think.”
—Taiichi Ohno
Did I Keep My Promise?
I started this book stating that no methodology can guarantee success, but I promised a repeatable, actionable process for building products, one that ...
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