The Lean Startup
“I think that you need to read The Lean Startup.”
Why it is worth your time
The Lean Startup is Eric Ries's 2011 book on how to build a company under uncertainty. Ries co-founded the virtual-world company IMVU and drew on that experience and on lean manufacturing ideas from Toyota. The method is the build-measure-learn loop: ship a minimum viable product, measure what customers do, and decide whether to persevere or pivot. Jason told TWiST listeners in May 2020 that they needed to read it. He has run an accelerator and an angel syndicate for years, and the book's vocabulary of MVPs and pivots is the one his founders use. It suits first-time founders and anyone inside a large company who wants a shared language for experiments. The caveat is that the book dates from 2011, so its examples predate that, and Publishers Weekly found the writing dry and pedantic.
