Why a Lean Startup Challenge?
- 1. Most Startups Fail from a Lack of customers not Product Development Failure Customer Development in the High-Tech Enterprise 1 September 2008
- 2. My Lean Story @LSChallenge
- 3. My Awesome Idea The idea was simply to build a platform to let people trade their physical assets like their financial assets. It involved building a large catalog, and letting people buy and sell their stuff like stocks
- 4. Exhibit A User Portfolio Product Wiki Automated Shipping Scanned Item Works like Netflix – seal and ship
- 5. What I did first… Of course… I went ahead and built it. It was groundbreaking. • I found two co-founders • Hired programmers • Built it quietly
- 6. After 12 months • Product was live! • No CUSTOMERS…. • Found a competitor doing the exact same thing
- 7. What I learned… • 14 Months In Development
- 8. What I learned… • 14 months in development • Lots of money invested
- 9. What I learned… • 14 months in development • Lots of money invested • No Customers
- 10. What I learned… • 14 months in development • Lots of money invested • No Customers • Identical Competitor – that just Raised $5.3m from DFJ
- 11. What I learned… • 14 months in development • Lots of money invested DISASTER!!! • No Customers • Identical Competitor – that just Raised $5.3m from DFJ
- 12. How Did This Happen?! @LSChallenge
- 13. We didn’t iterate. We built.
- 14. We didn’t iterate. We built. We didn’t do CustDev. We Assumed
- 15. We didn’t iterate. We built. We didn’t do CustDev. We Assumed We didn’t have a strategy when assumptions changed
- 16. We didn’t iterate. We built. We didn’t do CustDev. We Assumed We didn’t have a strategy when assumptions changed We did it all in secret
- 17. Launch Awards 1 2 3 4 Weekend Ceremony Learn to build something people want
- 18. Launch Awards 1 2 3 4 Weekend Ceremony • 4 week Lean Startup Competition • Experiment and iterate on your model each week • Receive feedback from mentors • Learn from awesome speakers • Get a chance to win up to $20,000 in cash and prizes
Editor's Notes
- #3: I’ll call this is my lean storyMy first two startups were small side projects. My third one was one with a big vision.It starts the way they always do… boy meets Idea, boy falls in love with idea. Boy meets co-founders, and they start building a website.
- #4: I’m a big nerd. As evidenced by this photo of me on what was probably the happiest moment of my life, getting my picture taken with the MIT mascot. I went to grad school at MIT, where I had a great time. Since Grad School,
- #8: So where were we after a year and a half?
- #10: Not only that, I found out that they had just gotten funded for $5m
- #13: And all I could think to myself was, how did this happen?Everything seemed like it was going so well. We had a great idea, and we thought we were executing it well. But the truth is, we made almost every non-lean, classic mistake that you can.We didn’t iterate. We bullt. We didn’t do CustDev. We AssumedWe didn’t have a strategy for how to react when those assumptions changedWe did it all in secretAnd I decided to put everything on hold and learn a few things about startups, before I got myself into any more trouble.
- #14: And all I could think to myself was, how did this happen?Everything seemed like it was going so well. We had a great idea, and we thought we were executing it well. But the truth is, we made almost every non-lean, classic mistake that you can.We didn’t iterate. We bullt. We didn’t do CustDev. We AssumedWe didn’t have a strategy for how to react when those assumptions changedWe did it all in secretAnd I decided to put everything on hold and learn a few things about startups, before I got myself into any more trouble.
- #15: And all I could think to myself was, how did this happen?Everything seemed like it was going so well. We had a great idea, and we thought we were executing it well. But the truth is, we made almost every non-lean, classic mistake that you can.We didn’t iterate. We bullt. We didn’t do CustDev. We AssumedWe didn’t have a strategy for how to react when those assumptions changedWe did it all in secretAnd I decided to put everything on hold and learn a few things about startups, before I got myself into any more trouble.
- #16: And all I could think to myself was, how did this happen?Everything seemed like it was going so well. We had a great idea, and we thought we were executing it well. But the truth is, we made almost every non-lean, classic mistake that you can.We didn’t iterate. We bullt. We didn’t do CustDev. We AssumedWe didn’t have a strategy for how to react when those assumptions changedWe did it all in secretAnd I decided to put everything on hold and learn a few things about startups, before I got myself into any more trouble.
- #17: And all I could think to myself was, how did this happen?Everything seemed like it was going so well. We had a great idea, and we thought we were executing it well. But the truth is, we made almost every non-lean, classic mistake that you can.We didn’t iterate. We bullt. We didn’t do CustDev. We AssumedWe didn’t have a strategy for how to react when those assumptions changedWe did it all in secretAnd I decided to put everything on hold and learn a few things about startups, before I got myself into any more trouble.