The Minimum and

The ViableDr Tendayi VikiUniversity of Kent

Website: www.tendayiviki.com Follow Me: @tendayiviki

The Founder’s Hive

About Me:Academic: @unikent

4 failed startups, e.g. Tasksauce

Currently: Valideation

Organizer: Lean Startup Circle Kent

It’s a New Day 

The costs and difficulty of setting up a new startup have plummeted…

The question is no longer can it be built, but rather should it be built….

Eric Ries (2011) The Lean Startup

http://lean.st

The Challenge 

Most New Business Ideas

Are Terrible

People are terrible at predicting what other

people will pay money for.

There is very little value in the initial idea itself. It is just a seed that forms the basis for learning.

Great entrepreneurs are comfortable with “killing their babies”…

And pivoting to new ideas….

The Curse of the “O’s”

CEO, CFO, CMO, CTO, COO 

Startups are not smaller versions of big companies! 

Steve Blank & Bob Dorf (2012) The Startup Owner’s Manual

http://ow.ly/fcJEU

Startups are more like frogs than fish.

Rob Fitzpatrick and Salim Virani (2012)

http://www.foundercentric.com

The Curse of Early Success

You can’t argue with success…

Yes you can. Seth Godin

http://ow.ly/fcIUG

No two startup situations are the same…(Even in the same market as another company)

Rob Fitzpatrick and Salim Virani (2012)

http://www.foundercentric.com/

Each startup situation has its own topography….

And it’s a great challenge to business plan for that…

A Startup is A Thesis 

Not Executing a Plan but;

A Path for Searching:

For a sustainable and profitable business model…

Eric Ries (2011) The Lean Startup

http://lean.st

Get out of the building and start talking to

customers

As early as possible…

Ash Maurya (2012)Running Lean

http://www.runningleanhq.com/

In a Lean Startup, we don’t build products with the goal of selling: ◦It is always with the goal of learning.

That is why we build minimum viable products (MVP). ◦The minimal product we need to build to

maximise learning.

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The Minimum Viable Product

The hypothesis/objective you are trying to learn.

from the target market segment you are trying to learn about.

and the form it takes to achieve that learning.

Patrick Vlaskovitz (2012)http://vlaskovits.com/2012/09/apple-maps-debacle-and-minimum-viable-products/

A Great MVP

Specify who you are going to be talking to from the beginning.◦Be specific about your target sample.

If you talk to anyone who will talk to you: ◦It becomes hard to distinguish signal from

noise.

Running Successful Experiments

Specify exactly what you would expect to find if your assumptions are correct.

◦Hypotheses MUST be falsifiable.◦Set minimum success criteria.

Otherwise, there is no way to know if you have learned anything.

Running Successful Experiments

In science, the process is called operationalization:

◦Taking an abstract notion and concretising it!

The products you build as an MVP must be a concretised test of your hypotheses about customers.

A Great MVP

Get out of the building and start talking to customers.

No one is going to steal your idea…

Remember, there is very little value in the initial idea itself. It is just a seed that forms the basis for learning.

Eric Ries (2011) The Lean Startup

http://lean.st

THANK YOU