Why Implement Lean start-up methodology?

Launching a new enterprise in current business scenario has always been a hit-or-miss proposition. According to the new research by Harvard Business School, only 25% of all start-ups are successful. Traditionally, you write a business plan, assemble a team, introduce a product and then start selling the product. Sometimes, you may face a major setback during the development phase. Here comes the methodology of Lean startup which makes the process of starting a company less risky.

What is Lean Start-up?

The Lean Startup is a scientific approach for creating and managing startups and to get a desired product to customers’ hands faster. This method teaches you how to drive a startup – how to steer, when to turn, and when to persevere- and grow a business with maximum acceleration. It is a principled approach to new product development.

Lean Startup method increases the chances of success by following principles like failing fast and continuous learning. Following these principles will help to develop products in an iterative and incremental manner. This approach gets a desired product to the customer’s hands faster. Once the customer uses the product, feedback is given which helps the startup to learn what the customer likes and finds valuable.

On March 8th, 2014,    I attended the ‘Startup Saturday’ session on Lean Startups where few early-stage startups shared their experiences about Lean startup methodology. One such interesting startup was Fests.info. It is an on-line portal that showcases the various events happening in Hyderabad. Initially, Fest.info had developed a minimum viable product (MVP) that broad-casted only college events. They received requests from users that they should cover non-college events as well. Harish Kotra, the CEO, said, “We found that our startup should be pivoted after receiving feedback from the early adapters of our product”. Hence Fest.info took a pivot to showcase all the events in Hyderabad. Visit http://fests.info/ for more details

Another startup to implement Lean Methodology was Zify.co. Anurag Singh Rathore, founder of Zify.co, shared his experience on launching the MVP for his startup. With Zify, you can carpool with a power to choose time and location on your phone. Zify is in the process of receiving feedback from its customers which they are using for product development. If the current business model proves to be successful, they will start building a formal organisation. Visit http://zify.co/ for more details

Lean start-up methodology can be a tool that can be used by startups for customer development and to testify their business model. If the customer feedback reveals that your business hypothesis is incorrect, then this methodology helps take pivots and makes tweaks to your model.

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