All In Startup: Launching a New Idea When Everything Is on the Line

Foreword

A lot has happened in the field of evidence-based entrepreneurship since I first published the Four Steps to the Epiphany. In it, I first proposed that startups weren’t smaller versions of large companies, and that the traditional advice from investors—write a business plan and execute the plan—was wrong. The reality is that startups needed to search for a business model rather than execute a business plan.

Over the past decade, the concepts outlined in the book have grown into an international Lean Startup movement. The Lean Launchpad curriculum I teach at UC Berkeley, Stanford University, Columbia University, and UCSF is now being taught at hundreds of universities; over 250,000 students have taken the online version of the course, and the National Science Foundation is using the course to commercialize science as part of the NSF Innovation Corps program.

Even large companies facing continuous disruption have begun to understand the need for continuous innovation and the value of “getting out of the building” and testing their assumptions.

Despite all the progress we’ve made, there remain hundreds of thousands of would-be entrepreneurs who have yet to learn the concepts of evidence-based entrepreneurship. That’s why this book is so important.

All In Startup makes lean concepts more accessible through a simple but powerful allegory to which readers will easily relate. Diana Kander helps readers understand the value of the lean approach by tying it to a memorable story. ...