The document describes the journey of an agile consultant who struggled with the failure of his previous startup company. He became interested in lean startup principles and customer development practices. This led him to validate his business ideas through frequent experiments and customer feedback, rather than relying on untested assumptions. He now documents his business models explicitly and uses metrics and hypotheses to test solutions with MVPs before fully rolling products out. This new approach allows him to learn quickly and improve the likelihood of sustainable business success.

1. @agilesensei
www.agilesensei.com
written, illustrated
and performed by
Claudio Perrone

2. Most startups fail
will Yours?

3. If we keep acting like most entrepreneurs…

4. … less than 3 people in this room will
Create successful companies*
“(*) The only statistics you can
trust are those you falsified
yourself
--(often falsely attributed to) Winston Churchill

5. July 2009

6. “July 2009 was the wettest July
on record in Ireland”

7. “that month, a new life rocked my world…”

8. “that month, I left an exceptional company
I helped create from scratch”

9. “From the very beginning, I had embraced
Agile development to grow a
world-class software organization”

10. We continuously improved our
development processes…

11. We crafted opinionated software…
“The best software
has a vision.
The best software
takes sides.
…
Decide what
your vision is and run with it.”
-- 37 signals

12. We won awards
and respect…

13. we could almost
touch the sky…

14. Almost

15. “July 2009 was the wettest July
on record in Ireland”

16. I’ll remember it
as the month
matteo was born

17. But it is also the month
I had to let go of a dream

18. … so I became a Lean & Agile consultant!

19. On my first mission, a cio asked me a
question that haunts me to this day…

20. “If you were so smart,
why did you fail?”

21. I became increasingly intrigued by the rise
of Lean and its influence in the agile circles

22. Lean is heavily inspired by Toyota’s
breakthroughs in “operational excellence”

23. Using Lean and agile, I brought performance
improvements to many clients around Europe

24. But that old
question still
remained
unanswered…

25. … Until one day

26. I entered a new world

27. ... A world that recognized the extraordinary
challenges I once faced
“ A startup is a human institution
designed to create new products
and services under conditions of
extreme uncertainty.
--- Eric Ries

28. ... A world that showed how Searching for
a business model is different from
executing a validated one
“ A startup is a temporary
organization used to search for
a repeatable and scalable
business model.
--- Steve Blank

29. It gave me a path to create a sustainable
business around products that customers want
Customer development data,
PROBLEM/ PRODUCT/ SCALE feedback,
MARKET
insights
SOLUTION
FIT FIT
Customer Company
Customer Customer
stop creation stop
building
discovery stop validation
Agile development
Pivot
hypothesis,
experiments,
insights
Problem: Unknown solution: Unknown

30. ... A path characterized by frequent scientific
experiments…
Learn
Build
(establish an
hypothesis)
(Build an experiment
to test that hypothesis)
Measure
(Determine a quantitative or qualitative method to evaluate that hypothesis.)

31. … To accelerate the rate of learning…
Learn
idea Build
(whether to pivot
or persevere) (Turn ideas into product)
(often a series of
MVPs)
data
Product
Measure
(How customers respond)

32. … And measure real progress towards success
Acquisition How do users find you?
Activation Do users have a great first experience?
retention
Do users come back?
revenue How do you make money?
referral Do user tell others?
( see Dave McClure
“Pirate” metrics)
Cohort analysis

33. Today

34. I document my business model(s) explicitly
Solution
Top 3 Unique Unfair Customer
Problems Value Advantage Segments
Proposition
Key metrics Channels
Existing Early
alternatives adopters
Cost structure Revenue streams
www.leancanvas.com

35. my vision is built on opinions untested
assumptions

36. … which I systematically validate with
experiments…

37. … that force me to “get out of the building”

38. …and gather data to verify whether my
actions affect customer behavior
Hypotheses/ IN PROGRESS
GOALs DONE VALIDATED
LEARNING
BACKLOG SELECTED DESIGN/BUILD PARTIAL VALIDATE FULL VERIFY
EXPERIMENTS ROLLOUT QUALITATIVELY ROLLOUT QUANTITATIVELY
DONE
DONE

39. I validate my solutions, OFTEN with low fidelity MVPs

40. … and Activate enthusiastic earlyvangelists with a
glimpse of a future that will come

41. What will
your future
look like?

42. “ Smart entrepreneurs
don’t dream of success.
They create the conditions
to inevitably converge to it.
--- Me (1967 - )

43. Thank
you!
Claudio
Perrone
claudio@agilesensei.com
www.agilesensei.com
www.twi:er.com/agilesensei