Running Lean, 3rd Edition

Running Lean, 3rd Edition

by Ash Maurya
Released March 2022
Publisher(s): O'Reilly Media, Inc.
ISBN: 9781098108779

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Book description

We're building more products today than ever before, but most of them fail--not because we can't complete what we want to build but because we waste time, money, and effort building the wrong product. What we need is a systematic process for quickly vetting product ideas and raising our odds of success. That's the promise of Running Lean.

In this inspiring book, Ash Maurya takes you through an exacting strategy for achieving product/market fit for your fledgling venture. You'll learn ideas and concepts from several innovative methodologies, including the Lean Startup, business model design, design thinking, and Jobs-to-be-Done. This new edition introduces the continuous innovation framework and follows one entrepreneur's journey from initial vision to a business model that works.

  • Deconstruct your idea using a one-page Lean Canvas
  • Stress-test your idea for desirability, viability, and feasibility
  • Define key milestones charted on a traction roadmap
  • Maximize your team's efforts for speed, learning, and focus
  • Prioritize the right actions at the right time
  • Learn how to conduct effective customer interviews
  • Engage your customers throughout the development cycle
  • Continually test your product with smaller, faster iterations
  • Find a repeatable and scalable business model

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Table of contents

  1. Foreword
  2. Preface
    1. O’Reilly Online Learning
    2. How to Contact Us
    3. Acknowledgments
  3. Introduction
    1. A Tale of Two Entrepreneurs
    2. One Year Ago…
      1. Off to the Races
      2. Six Months Later
      3. Catch-22
    3. A Traction-First Approach Is the New Way Forward
    4. What Determines Success Isn’t Differing Skill Sets But Differing Mindsets
      1. The Stakes Are Much Higher This Time
      2. Speed of Learning Is the New Unfair Advantage
      3. Succeeding in the New World Requires New Mindsets
    5. You Can’t Afford to Wait for an Idea Whose Time Has Come
      1. Steve Learns About Minimum Viable Products
    6. Don’t Start with an MVP
    7. There Is a Systematic Approach to Entrepreneurship
    8. About Me
    9. How This Book Is Organized
      1. Part I: Design
      2. Part II: Validation
      3. Part III: Growth
    10. Is This Book for You?
    11. Does It Work for Services and Physical Products?
    12. Practice Trumps Theory
  4. I. Design
  5. 1. Deconstruct Your Idea on a Lean Canvas
    1. Sketching Your First Lean Canvas
      1. Customer Segments
      2. Problem
      3. Unique Value Proposition
      4. Solution
      5. Channels
      6. Revenue Streams and Cost Structure
      7. Key Metrics
      8. Unfair Advantage
    2. Refining Your Lean Canvas
      1. So, How Do You Avoid the Goldilocks Problem?
      2. How Do You Know When to Split Your Lean Canvas?
      3. Steve Splits His Big Idea Canvas into Specific Variants
    3. What’s Next?
  6. 2. Stress Test Your Idea for Desirability
    1. Defining Better
    2. Our Innovator’s Bias Gets in the Way
    3. Meet the Innovator’s Gift
      1. Unpacking the Innovator’s Gift
      2. Steve Challenges the Innovator’s Gift
    4. Using the Innovator’s Gift to Stress Test Your Idea for Desirability
      1. Customer Segments: Keep It Simple
      2. Early Adopters: Forget Personas
      3. Existing Alternatives: Transcend Category
      4. Problems: What’s Broken with the Old Way?
      5. UVP: How Will You Cause a Switch?
    5. Steve Realizes He Has a Hammer Problem
  7. 3. Stress Test Your Idea for Viability
    1. Don’t Create a Financial Forecast; Use a Fermi Estimate Instead
      1. What Is Traction?
      2. Welcome to the Customer Factory
    2. Testing the Viability of Your Idea Using a Fermi Estimate
      1. Define a Target Throughput Goal
      2. Test Whether Your Idea Can Deliver Your Target Throughput Goal
      3. Revise Your Goal or Fix Your Business Model
    3. Running a Fermi Estimate on Your Idea
    4. Steve Reviews His Business Models with Mary
  8. 4. Stress Test Your Idea for Feasibility
    1. Charting a Traction Ramp
      1. Steve Charts His Traction Roadmap
    2. Formulating a Now-Next-Later Rollout Plan
      1. Stage 1: Now—Problem/Solution Fit
      2. Stage 2: Next—Product/Market Fit
      3. Stage 3: Later—Scale
    3. Steve Gets a Lesson on Right Action, Right Time
    4. Steve Learns About Wizard-of-Oz MVPs
    5. Steve Formulates His Now-Next-Later Rollout Plan
  9. 5. Communicate Your Idea Clearly and Concisely
    1. What’s Your Elevator Pitch?
      1. Outlining Your Elevator Pitch
    2. The Different Worldviews of an Idea
      1. The Investor Worldview
      2. The Customer Worldview
      3. The Advisor Worldview
    3. Delivering Your Business Model Pitch
    4. The 10-Slide Business Model Pitch Deck
      1. Desirability
      2. Viability
      3. Feasibility
    5. Steve Shares His Business Model Pitch with Others
  10. II. Validation
  11. 6. Validate Your Idea Using 90-Day Cycles
    1. The 90-Day Cycle
      1. A Typical 90-Day Cycle
    2. Getting Ready for Your First 90-Day Cycle
      1. Assemble the Right Team
      2. Establish a Regular Reporting Cadence
    3. Seven Habits for Highly Effective Experiments
      1. 1. Declare Your Expected Outcomes Upfront
      2. 2. Make Declaring Outcomes a Team Sport
      3. 3. Emphasize Estimation, Not Precision
      4. 4. Measure Actions, Not Words
      5. 5. Turn Your Assumptions into Falsifiable Hypotheses
      6. 6. Time-Box Your Experiments
      7. 7. Always Use a Control Group
    4. Steve Establishes an External Accountability Structure
  12. 7. Kick Off Your First 90-Day Cycle
    1. Steve Calls a 90-Day Cycle Kickoff Meeting
    2. The Problem/Solution Fit Playbook
      1. Customers Don’t Buy Products, They Buy a Promise of Something Better
      2. How to Make a Promise of Better
      3. When Are You Done with Problem/Solution Fit?
    3. Steve Calls a 90-Day Cycle Planning Meeting
    4. The Mafia Offer Campaign
      1. Building a Mafia Offer
      2. Running a Mafia Offer Campaign
      3. When to Use a Mafia Offer Campaign
    5. Steve Tries Taking a Shortcut
      1. Mary Bursts Steve’s Bubble (Again)
    6. No Surveys or Focus Groups, Please
      1. Are Surveys Good for Anything?
      2. Preemptive Strikes and Other Objections (or Why I Don’t Need to Interview Customers)
  13. 8. Understand Your Customers Better Than They Do
    1. The Problem with Problems
      1. Case Study: Using Problem Discovery Interviews to Drive New Home Sales
    2. Focus on the Bigger Context: The Job-to-be-Done
      1. Case Study: Using Problem Discovery Interviews to Build Better Drill Bits
      2. Finding the Bigger Context
      3. Scoping the Bigger Context
      4. Diving Deeper into a Bigger, More Specific Context
    3. Running a Problem Discovery Sprint
      1. Broad-Match Versus Narrow-Match Problem Discovery Sprints
      2. Finding Prospects
      3. Steve Kicks Off the First Problem Discovery Sprint
      4. Conducting Interviews
      5. Steve Creates a Meta-Script for His Interviews
      6. Capturing Insights
    4. Steve Reviews the Results of the Broad-Match Problem Discovery Sprint
    5. When Are You Done with Problem Discovery?
    6. The Altverse Team Uncovers Several Additional Jobs-to-be-Done
  14. 9. Design Your Solution to Cause a Switch
    1. Steve Learns About the Concierge MVP
    2. Running a Solution Design Sprint
      1. Addressing Desirability
      2. Addressing Viability
      3. Addressing Feasibility
    3. The 5 P’s of MVP
    4. Steve Takes a Stab at the 5 P’s of MVP
  15. 10. Deliver a Mafia Offer Your Customers Cannot Refuse
    1. Case Study: The iPad Mafia Offer
    2. Running an Offer Delivery Sprint
    3. Assembling Your Offer
      1. Define the Characters in Your Customer Story Pitch
      2. Outline the Structure of Your Customer Story Pitch
      3. Steve Shares His Customer Story Pitch Outline with the Team
    4. Delivering Your Offer
    5. Optimizing Your Offer
      1. Measure Your Customer Factory Metrics Weekly
      2. Identify Your Key Constraint
      3. Formulate Ways of Breaking the Constraint
    6. Steve Meets with the Team to Review the Results of Their First Offer Delivery Sprint
    7. When Are You Done with Offer Delivery?
  16. 11. Run a 90-Day Cycle Review
    1. Steve Calls a Pre-Review Meeting Just with Mary
    2. Preparing for the Meeting
      1. Collect/Update Artifacts
      2. Assemble a Progress Report Pitch Deck
    3. Running the Meeting
    4. Steve Calls a 90-Day Cycle Review Meeting
  17. III. Growth
  18. 12. Get Ready to Launch
    1. The Altverse Team Prepare for Launch
    2. Keep Your Customer Factory Running
      1. Look for Ways to Automate Your Customer Factory
    3. Race to Value Delivery
    4. Extend Your Customer Factory Metrics Dashboard
    5. Roll Out Your MVP in Batches
    6. The Altverse Team Launch Their Concierge MVP
  19. 13. Make Happy Customers
    1. The Altverse Team Learns About Behavior Design
    2. The Happy Customer Loop
      1. Don’t Be a Feature Pusher
      2. Implement an 80/20 Rule
      3. Prevent a Switch
      4. Outlearn the Competition
      5. Reduce Friction
      6. Learn the Science of Habits
      7. Chart a Customer Progress Roadmap
      8. Trigger Your Customers
      9. Help Your Customers Make Progress
      10. Reinforce Progress
    3. The Altverse Team Calls a 90-Day Cycle Review Meeting
  20. 14. Find Your Growth Rocket
    1. The Altverse Team Learns About Growth Rockets
    2. The Rocket Ship Growth Model
      1. Launching Rocket Ships
    3. The Three Types of Growth Loops
      1. The Revenue Growth Loop
      2. The Retention Growth Loop
      3. The Referral Growth Loop
      4. Can You Have Multiple Growth Rockets?
    4. Finding Your Primary Growth Rocket
      1. Short-Listing Growth Rocket Candidates
      2. Validating Your Growth Rocket
      3. Optimizing Your Growth Rocket
    5. Steve Makes Mary an Offer She Can’t Refuse
  21. 15. Epilogue
    1. The BOOTSTART Manifesto
      1. 1. Entrepreneurs Are Everywhere
      2. 2. The Persona of the Garage Entrepreneur Has Changed
      3. 3. There Is No Better Time to Start
      4. 4. Most Products Still Fail
      5. 5. A Dozen Reasons Why Products Fail
      6. 6. The Number One Reason Why Products Fail
      7. 7. The Number Two Reason Why Products Fail
      8. 8. You Don’t Need Permission to Start
      9. 9. Love the Problem, Not Your Solution
      10. 10. Don’t Write a Business Plan
      11. 11. Your Business Model Is the Product
      12. 12. Focus on Time, Not Timing
      13. 13. Not Acceleration, but Deceleration
      14. 14. Not Faux Validation, but Traction
      15. 15. Remove Failure from Your Vocabulary
      16. 16. It’s Time to Act on Your Big Idea
  22. References and Further Reading
  23. Index
  24. About the Author

Product information

  • Title: Running Lean, 3rd Edition
  • Author(s): Ash Maurya
  • Release date: March 2022
  • Publisher(s): O'Reilly Media, Inc.
  • ISBN: 9781098108779