A take on lean-startup methodology. It’s actually a much more readable and actionable take on the concepts that Eric Reis first articulated. I’d highly recommend this for anyone involved in early stage concepts to familiarise and get yourself familiar with ‘lean-methodologies’ aka being very fast and very efficient. The book is unlike others, in that it is in split into 15 chapters, each of which has c. 4-6 one page topics. Very readable, very digestible. Hence my notes are a short list of actionables I took away - the book is very quick to read so in all honesty I’d recommend just blitzing the book!
- Build LESS - less features/options/preferences. Start with No.
- Build something for your self - scratch your own itch.
- Fix time and budget - flex the scope to fix this. NOT the other way around.
- Ideation → paper sketches → HMTL screens → Code it. Get to running software ASAP.
- Have a bias for execution. Speed > velocity.
- Less overhead - less meetings, just-in-time thinking, small team of 3
- Embrace being small - speak like a human not a corporate, only small companies can have 10/10 customer service,
- Don’t focus on details at the start - this can come later. 80% of things won’t matter.
- Forget feature request lists. The most pressing things will be repeated and repeated by customers.
- Don’t have silos in teams - have generalists. Between two candidates, pick the better writer.
- When you fire someone, don’t immediately hire a replacement
- Marketing; teaser → preview → launch
- teaser - give influencers a sneak peak. Use sites like Boing Boing, Slashdot, Digg, . Collect emails
- preview - few weeks from launch, give screenshots/milestones/features. Share ideas/principles of the app. Share a manifesto, tour, case studies, buzz. Collect emails.
- launch - email blast. Launch full marketing site. Blogs, tweets etc.