The Lean Startup

The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses is a 2011 book by American entrepreneur Eric Ries. It introduces the lean startup methodology, a systematic approach for developing businesses and products that emphasizes rapid experimentation, customer feedback, and iterative design.

Ries proposes that startups can accelerate product development by employing "just-in-time scalability." This approach involves releasing a minimum viable product (MVP) to early adopters, gathering feedback, and iteratively refining the product to better meet customer needs.

Drawing from his experiences as a startup advisor, employee, and founder, Ries developed the lean startup methodology. He attributed the failure of his first startup, Catalyst Recruiting, to a lack of understanding of the target market and an overemphasis on a singular product vision.

He later worked at There, Inc., a virtual world platform. In both cases, Ries identified a mismatch between product development efforts and customer needs, which informed his later work on the startup process.

The methodology draws from principles of lean manufacturing and agile development. It emphasizes experimentation, customer feedback, and iterative design over detailed planning and intuition.

The book references several companies that have applied lean startup principles, including Alphabet Energy, Dropbox, Wealthfront, and General Electric (GE).