Building Your Business Around Learning
Eric Ries hates that he was forced to validate having to throw out 25,000 lines of code by telling himself that he learned something. The core argument in his book, The Lean Startup, is that companies should be learning what they need to know before they move into the development phase. That doesn’t just mean that good design will instantly assure your product’s success. It means you’ll need to understand more than just the typical management structure to build something amazing.
Ries and many other entrepreneurs have been developing their systems around the needs of the customer rather than spending months debating bugs and features. I’ve broken down some of the basic cornerstones of the Lean Startup movement here, and hopefully they’ll serve you well in building your next idea.
Rethink Your Design Before the Crunch
Dropbox is a no-brainer for cloud storage. It’s a no-brainer because the platform was designed around the needs of the customer rather than bogged down in differentiating itself from the competition. Even the name is built around exactly what the product does. Say it out loud. Dropbox.
Dropbox was not inspired by the competition so much as the horror stories that came out of customer complaints regarding Dropbox’s competition. This forced the engineers and software designers to build a product around the failure of its predecessors. The results are a product that humbly boasts over 4,000,000 users. Most start-ups are entering an already flooded market. That means if you’re doing something that’s been done, the only market research you’ll need to create a superior product are the failures of your competition. Differentiate yourself from your market by making a bulletproof product. Don’t just make the logo flashier.
Accept Failure and Learn to Pivot
Ries, during a talk at Google, explained that the biggest hurdle at one of his first entrepreneurial endeavors was a basic misunderstanding of customer needs. The product, IMVU, was originally intended to be a cross-platform IM client that provided a 3D avatar when talking to friends. His first hurdle was making the software cross-platform. 25,000 lines of code later, Ries realized the futility in trying to get teenagers to believe something is cool. IMVU ended up becoming a streamlined virtual world with built-in systems designed to introduce you to people online. The platform has been emulated, iterated, but never perfectly copied. Entrepreneurship is about failure, but the ability to figure out the part of your product that succeeds is where success becomes viable.
Rethink Management
Entrepreneurship is, at its core, management. You build your assets, design your product, and develop your team around your expected results. The weird part about the internet is, however, that you don’t actually need the focus group anymore. Zappos.com was founded because a guy realized people were willing to buy shoes online that he purchased from local vendors. His realization redefined his parameters for success. He knew what he was building, how to build it, and most importantly: The customer-base was there. Building your business around the needs of the customer is, in the age of Facebook, more than just a best practice. It’s the baseline for success.
If you want a more in-depth analysis of the Lean Startup Movement, check out a presentation that Ries gave to Google. Also, buying his book wouldn’t hurt. Have any other tips for entrepreneurs? Did I misinterpret Ries’ message? Let us know with a comment.
