Scott Porad

I didn’t say, “even Buddha valued measuring progress“, my friend Justin did.  He was referring to this:

The Buddha asks the group why they are practicing these austerities, and one replies that they are wearing away their past karma and would end their suffering by not adding any additional karma. The Buddha asks if they know how much of their old karma they have worn away. They say, “No.” He then asks if they know how much they have left. Again they answer, “No.” Finally the Buddha asks if they even know for certain they existed in the past and have karma to wear away. Again they shake their heads and say, “No.” The Buddha replies that this is meaningless practice.

Click here for more on Lean Startups.

The other day I wrote that what’s most important for a successful startup is:

…finding a product-market fit…. Everything else is just commentary.

and I stand by the first portion of that statement.

However, I sort of take issue with myself on the second portion: is everything else commentary or noise?

The more I think about it, the answer is noise.

Think about the post I wrote last week about getting started with Lean Startups.  Or, likewise, the one about how to create a successful blog.  Both of these had to do with cutting through the noise and paying attention to what’s most important.

Keeping your eyes on the prize, as they say.

Often, when we talk about building startups, or technology, or social media, we get carried away with so many ideas and details.  It gets confusing and noisy…we get mixed up with Methodology X or Philosophy Y or Practice Z.  All of these methodologies and philosophies and practices serve a purpose, and that’s what we often forget.

Simply put, we confuse ourselves and lose the forest for the trees.

Recently, I was part of a planning session for a conference on startups.  One of the topics being discussed was:

Should we have a session on choice of platform or language?  Which is best for a startup?  For example, comparing Ruby to C# or Ruby on Rails to ASP.NET.

There are differences in platforms, I’m not going to deny that, but I don’t really think those differences have any meaningful difference in the success of a startup.  (Or, I suppose I should be more specific: in the success of a web-based startup.)

The name of the game in a startup is finding a product-market fit.  In other words, identifying and/or creating a product that your market will adopt and/or buy.  Everything else is just commentary.

Actually, the real name of the game is finding the product-market fit before you run out of money.  So, which platform does that?

Answer: The platform that you know best and can develop on most quickly.

In other words, the differences in platform are contextual: it’s about what your team knows, and the platform they can develop upon most rapidly, so that you can start generating revenue before the clock runs out.

Don’t get confused by platforms.  Just pick a shovel and get to work.  The hard part isn’t selecting the shovel, anyhow, it’s figuring out where to dig the hole.

I’ve been talking a lot about Lean Startups, and there’s a lot of confusion about exactly, “What is a Lean Startup?”

Most people seem to think that is a startup that applies Lean Manufacturing principles to software development.  That is part of it, but not the whole picture.

Lean Startup refers to a set of product development methodologies that

• attempt to increase success
• by focusing on reducing uncertainty and risk
• through activities that ensure there is an actual market for the product or service being developed.

This process is called Customer Development, and the ideas about in Steve Blank’s Four Steps to the Epiphany underlie much of the Lean Startup philosophy.  For a primer on Customer Development and Lean Startups, I encourage you to watch the outstanding video below.

Dear Dave, Eric and Lean Startup Meetup at SXSW Attendees,

Let me start by simply setting the record straight: Cheezburger absolutely supports the Lean Startup approach.

For those of you who weren’t at the meetup, in a poorly executed attempt at humor, I gave many the impression that Cheezburger doesn’t buy into the Lean Startup idea. This is incorrect; we have built much of our development processes around the approach, and continue to push ourselves to improve by better understanding how the ideas of a Lean Startup can be applied to our team.

I suppose the lesson here is that just because we run a network of funny web sites doesn’t mean that we’re actually funny people.  Haha…the joke’s on you!

In all seriousness, the question I asked at the event is an important one: if you buy into the ideas of a Lean Startup, then where is the best place to start?  I asked this question because…

• …when we talk about big new ideas, like Lean Startups, there are many, many different aspects and techniques that are discussed.  For a beginner, it can be overwhelming and confusing which can make it especially hard to see the forest through the trees.  As such, I thought it was important for Dave and Eric to give some concrete guidance to those in the room who wanted to experiment with these ideas.

• and, at Cheezburger we’ve been experimenting with Lean Startup ideas for about a year, so I wanted to know if the things we had been doing were those Eric and Dave thought were most important.

With that in mind, for those of you who weren’t there, allow me to summarize Eric and Dave’s answers to my question.

• Dave’s point of view was that the place to start was with a test.  One simple test.  I can’t remember his exact words, but he basically boiled it down to this: identify a customer segment, establish a hypothesis about that segment, make a change to product or marketing, run an A/B test, and measure the impact of the change.  With that new learning, then repeat the process again.

• Eric’s point of view was that the place to start was with a shift of mindset from thinking about delivering code as an achievement to thinking about a measurable learning as an achievement. For example, it might be better for us to measure the number of A/B test results we have, than to measure the number of story points of code we deliver.
   
  Eric went on to describe the practices of a Lean Startup as a three-tiered pyramid—the base of the pyramid is formed by the shift in mindset that he described; the second layer of the pyramid are some of the basic customer development practices, such as A/B testing and minimum viable products; the top of the pyramid are the software development practices such as Agile, TDD and continuous deployment. In his view, start at the bottom of the pyramid and work up.

I thought both of these answers were great, and terrific guidance for people who are just getting started with Lean Startup ideas.  And, of course, they mesh nicely—Dave gave us the practical, and Eric the philosophical.

Finally, in closing, I want to thank Ash Mauyra who organized the event.  I believe this meetup was a major step in advancing the cause of Lean Startup methodologies, and they wouldn’t have happened without Ash’s efforts!

Somehow, my link got messed up, sorry about that.  The Open Letter to Eric Ries, Dave McClure and Everyone Who Attended the Lean Startup Meetup at SXSW is here: http://www.scottporad.com/2010/03/24/open-letter-to-eric-ries-dave-mcclure-and-everyone-who-attended-the-lean-startup-meetup-at-sxsw/