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From The Personal MBA's List of the 99 Best Business Books...

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Review: 'The Lean Startup' by Eric Ries

Starting a business is tricky. You have an idea, but you don't know in advance whether or not it will work. Jumping in and trying things helps you learn, but going too far can be a recipe for losing money and precious time if your idea isn't viable.

In The Lean Startup, you'll learn the fundamentals of organizing a new business for fast learning. Instead of investing money and time on blind faith, Eric Ries explains how validating your critical assumptions as quickly as possible is the true test in the early days of a new business.

Instead of spending lots of time and money developing the "perfect" offer only to have it flop when it's presented to the market, The Lean Startup provides many strategies for validating the worth of a business idea. One core strategy is to develop a minimum viable product - the smallest offer you can create that someone will actually buy, then offer it to real customers. If they buy, you're in good shape. If your original idea doesn't work, you simply "pivot" and try another idea.

The Lean Startup also covers business analysis: what to measure when building a business. Instead of measuring things that are easy and fun to measure ("vanity metrics"), Ries shows you how to measure things related to the fundamental success of the business. Once your assumptions have been validated, you can build the business with confidence, secure in the knowledge your continued investment will pay dividends.

While many of the examples provided involve internet startups, the principles in the The Lean Startup can be applied to all businesses, regardless of industry.

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(Note: for a deeper examination of the ideas presented in The Lean Startup", I recommend reading The Four Steps to the Epiphany by Steve Blank.)

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Buy 'The Lean Startup' by Eric Ries

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