Running Lean, 2nd Edition

Foreword

Running Lean is the first book in the new Lean Series. Following the publication of The Lean Startup last year, I have had the opportunity to meet thousands of entrepreneurs and managers around the world. I have enjoyed hearing their stories and grappling with their questions. Most of all, I have heard an overwhelming demand for practical guidance for how to put Lean Startup principles into practice. There is no better person to begin that mission than Ash Maurya.

Practice Trumps Theory. When I first read those words on Ash Maurya’s blog, I knew he would be a valuable addition to a fledgling movement that was just getting started. Since then, he has been a tireless advocate for the Lean Startup movement. He has rigorously tested techniques for applying these ideas in his own startups, sharing what works and what doesn’t. He has conducted countless workshops, each of which is a crucible for discovering the challenges that real entrepreneurs face and for evaluating which solutions really work. And he has been a leader in bringing the movement to his hometown of Austin, one of our most important startup hubs.

The result of all of this work is the volume you now hold in your hand. Running Lean is a handbook for practicing entrepreneurs who want to increase their odds of success. This is not a book of philosophy, or an entertaining compendium of anecdotes. Rather, it is a detailed look at a battle-tested approach to building companies that matter.

We are living in an age of entrepreneurship. Most of the net new job growth in the USA in the past few decades has come from high-growth startups. All of us—investors, managers, policy makers, and ordinary citizens—have an interest in creating the conditions that will foster entrepreneurship. Our future prosperity depends on it.

There are probably more entrepreneurs operating today than at any time in history, thanks to profound changes in the startup landscape. New technologies, like cloud computing, are making it easier and cheaper to get started. New management methods, like the Lean Startup, are helping founders make better use of these capabilities. There has never been a better time to be an entrepreneur.

If I had to summarize these changes in one phrase, it would be this one: “the rentership of the means of production”—turning Karl Marx’s famous dictum on its head. In past eras, to build and operate a company of significant scale required dozens of stakeholders to give you permission. You needed access to capital, machinery, factories, warehouses, distribution partners, mass-market advertising, and so on.

Today, anyone with a credit card can rent all of these capabilities and more. What is significant about this development is that it enables more startup experiments than ever before. And make no mistake, a startup is an experiment. Today’s companies can build anything they can imagine. So the question we are called on to answer is no longer primarily, “can it be built?”, but rather, “should it be built?”

We need these experiments more than ever. The old management tools, pioneered by 20th-century companies like General Motors, relied on planning and forecasting in order to measure progress, assess opportunities, and hold managers accountable. And yet who really feels that our world is getting more and more stable every day?

Successful new products require constant, disciplined, experimentation—in the scientific sense—in order to discover new sources of profitable growth. This is true for the tiniest startup as well as for the most established company.

Running Lean provides a step-by-step blueprint to put these ideas into action. A business plan rests on a series of leap-of-faith assumptions, each of which can be tested empirically. Will customers want the product we’re building? Will they pay for it? Can we provide a service profitably? And once we find customers, can we grow? Running Lean lays out Ash’s approach to breaking these assumptions down so that they can become the subjects of rigorous experiments.

Running Lean’s simple, action-oriented templates provide tools that startups in all stages of development can use to help build breakthrough, disruptive new products and organizations.

It’s been just about three years since I first wrote the phrase “lean startup” in a blog post that a few dozen people read. Since then, these ideas have grown into a movement, embraced by thousands of entrepreneurs around the world dedicated to making sure that new products and new startups succeed. As you read through Running Lean, I hope you will put these ideas into practice and join our community. Odds are there is a Lean Startup Meetup taking place in your city. A complete list of meetups and links to other resources can be found at the official Lean Startup homepage: http://theleanstartup.com.

Welcome to the cutting edge of entrepreneurial practice. I hope you’ll share what you learn, what works and what doesn’t. Thank you for being part of this experiment.

Eric Ries

January 20, 2012

San Francisco, CA