1. Lauren Byrd
J7100
Entrepreneurial Journalism
March 25, 2015

2. LIFE’S TOO SHORT TO
BUILD SOMETHING
NOBODY WANTS.
- ASH MAURYA

3. WHAT IS RUNNING LEAN?
• A process for iterating from Plan A
to a plan that works, BEFORE
running out of resources.
• Being lean = eliminating waste or
being efficient with resources.

4. INNOVATION
• Innovation is occurring all
around us.
• Cost of building new products is
at an all time LOW.
• However, most startups still
FAIL.
(John Mullins and Randy Komisar, Getting to Plan B (Boston,
MA: Harvard Business Review Press, 2009)

5. RUNNING LEAN IS ABOUT…
Speed
Learning
Focus

6. LISTEN TO CUSTOMERS
Listening to customers is key,
but you have to know how.
You can’t ask customers what
they want, you have to listen to
them.

7. LISTEN TO CUSTOMERS
If I had asked people what they
wanted, they would have said faster
horses. - Henry Ford
It is not your customer’s job to know
what they want. - Steve Jobs

8. THE #1 REASON WHY PRODUCTS FAIL
We waste time,
money, and effort
building the wrong
product.
(because we didn’t listen)

9. KILLER IDEA OR SOLUTION
When entrepreneurs, come up with an idea, they
fall in love with the solution.

10. TOO UNIQUE?
We are often told to build
something unique or
different, so we purposely
define the solution in such a
manner that when we look
around, we find no
competition.

11. WHAT ABOUT “FIRST TO MARKET”?
Toyota
Ford
Apple
Microsoft
Google
Facebook

12. THEY WERE NOT FIRST!
They were all “fast followers”.

13. WHEN WE PITCH ONLY OUR SOLUTION
We are given a...
NO

14. WHAT INVESTORS LOOK FOR

15. CUSTOMERS….
Don’t care about
your solution

16. WHAT DO CUSTOMERS CARE
ABOUT?

17. TRUE JOB OF ENTREPRENEUR:
DE-RISKING YOUR BUSINESS MODEL

18. RUNNING LEAN META PRINCIPLES
① Document your Plan A
① Identify the riskiest parts of
your plan
① Systematically test your plan

19. LEAN CANVAS

20. IDENTIFYING RISKIEST PARTS OF
YOUR PLAN
For most products, solution is not what is
riskiest

21. SYSTEMATICALLY TEST YOUR PLAN
Experiments, Learning feedback loop