In The Founders’ Studio with Ash Maurya at Lean Startup London

by admin on Nov 15, 2011 in Bootstrapping, Lean Startup | Comments

• Live blog courtesy of Aliviator:

  mcshanea

  10:16@SaintSal: Your job as a founder is to systematically de-risk your startup. @ashmaurya #LeanStartup

• mcshanea

  10:15@mposchenrieder: #LeanStartup trio @ashmaurya @robfitz@SaintSal on stage and talking about dropping out of uni or not…t.co/3EWxgjpF

• mcshanea

  00:19

  Sadly there was no gossip (none that I can repeat at least).

  Great group of people, everyone seemed to take away some useful. Many thanks to Ash and Sal, another great meetup.

• mcshanea

  20:13And we’re all done and in the lobby. Will update if there’s any gossip!

• mcshanea

  20:03Ash’s book was written using Lean methodologies. By proving the metrics he was able to get a book deal. He was able to sell 10000 copies on his own so far.

• mcshanea

  19:57Ash made sure he had 1000 email addresses before he committed to writing a book. Spent half a day putting up a teaser page to validate. Got different price feedback. Didn’t give up anything, ensured the metrics were right first.

• mcshanea

  19:54Don’t quit the day job. Make sure there is a problem worth solving.

• mcshanea

  19:52

  Q: what do you do when you are just leaving Uni or in a job?

  When Ash started out he had to prove he would make money before anyone would lend. To get started it’s all about risk mitigation. Try to get as far as possible. Go find 10 people who would buy your product, and make them pay for it.

• mcshanea

  19:50

  Q: what would you say to people who would say this isn’t the route to success? How about spending lots of money with bit launch parties etc.

  Making a lot of money isn’t the main goal. Money is a byproduct of a great product.

• mcshanea

  19:43Sometimes you need to date before you can marry with teams you work with. Try to figure out how you can build relationships with people where there are clear open channels. Try to work with people first before you make them official part of the team.

• mcshanea

  19:41Ash hasn’t raised a single cent from an investor. His last startup was bootstrapped. Even if you have a day job there are things you can do to vett the idea. Try to focus on derisking parts of your plan by approaching it systematically. You might be able to find a company to back the product.

• mcshanea

  19:39

  Q: how do you know when to pivot or persevere?

  The answer is in the qualitive metric. As long as you are moving and improving you will know if you can continue.

• mcshanea

  19:36

  Q: on innovation distruption, is there a risk that you can avoid innovating because you follow a set methodology.

  Being the first isn’t always an advantage. The likes of facebook had others fail in the same space before they succeeded. Looking at what worked in the passed or failed in the past is always useful.

• mcshanea

  19:33There is a still a minimum number of 10 where you want at least this number to agree that a solution/feature is sound. The terrain before product market fit is very qualitive driven.

• mcshanea

  19:32

  Q: How do you test against a really small number of users?

  Sometimes you are not looking for statistical signifigance, you are just looking for one user to say yes. It will give you the first check of validation.

• mcshanea

  19:30Few mentions of the divide and conquer technique.

• mcshanea

  19:29

  In an area where there isn’t a problem e.g. games like Farmville, how does Lean work?

  Not problem driven, but desire driven. The question is how do you build or create it. Zynga are an good example of someone who tested with users, and had metrics around gameplay. In some cases you don’t have to ask what the problem is, the risk becomes the solution.

• mcshanea

  19:26Most entrepreneurs get hit with ideas. Questions to validate will be what is the problem, and who are the customers. The Canvas is very useful to further validate.

• mcshanea

  19:23We live in a design centric world. It’s quite hard to get away with just putting anything out there. We live in a attention deprived society. You need to put something out there that grabs attention.

• mcshanea

  19:20We are in love with the idea of the visionary. We forget that even the iPad was maybe 20 years in the making. There were many failures but the big vision was a success. Apple chase problems, not solutions.

• mcshanea

  19:19Don’t focus on solutions. Focus on problems. No point in trying to predict too far in the future.

• mcshanea

  19:15Some startups methods are too chaotic. They make changes to their homepage every week, but never manage to track anything useful.

• mcshanea

  19:12

  Q; How would you define innovation?

  Still in search of the definition. Metrics and cohorts. Grouping users into segments and tracking them over time. Great way to know if you are making progress.

• mcshanea

  19:08VC’s objectives are generally misaligned with early stage companies. They are focused on growth, which isn’t always a good thing at the early stage.

• mcshanea

  19:05Everyone takes something away from it. Technical Founders can identify what works, and they feel empowered because they can measure what they’re doing.

• mcshanea

  15:45

  Q: how would a VC apply this technique to those companies they fund?

  There are many VC’s who are supportive of Lean. They do fund, but not sure how actively they are tracked. Silicon Valley is more supportive at the moment.

• mcshanea

  19:02

  Q: Where is it going?

  It’s just the tip of the iceberg. It will run for very long in many iterations. It’s only at the point where people are getting interested. There isn’t a lot of imperical evidence that it works. There is a lot of work left to be done.

• mcshanea

  18:59He thinks Lean startup methodology brings together concepts and terminology to allow people to have common ground in how we all work.

• mcshanea

  18:58

  Question: will larger startups start to use these Lean techniques?

  He thinks they can. Example of tax software that was successful with this.

• mcshanea

  18:55 Will always work out what’s riskiest about the model. Whatever that ends up being he focused on and mitigates first. From there you can build the product.

• mcshanea

  18:55Snapshot of the group.

  
• mcshanea

  18:48

  Ash would lose his focus on his blog, then come back. But eventually had to kill it.

• mcshanea

  18:46When he first started out he had this inexplicable need to create things of value. Later it was all about survival. Then it was a focus on having value.

• mcshanea

  18:45Ash has been in startups since 2002. Most of his early startups were released in stealth i.e. he told no-one, as once he did the product probably wouldn’t exist.

• mcshanea

  18:14Hello everybody, I’m live blogging the event as much as I can here.