Too many startups begin with a product idea that they believe people want. They then spend months, if not years, developing that product without ever showing it to the potential customer, even in its most basic form. When they fail to gain widespread client acceptance, it is usually because they never spoke to potential customers to establish whether or not the product was appealing. When customers ultimately communicate, through their indifference, that they don't care about the idea, the startup fails.

# How It Works

The Lean Startup methodology is a scientific approach that is revolutionizing the way new products are developed and launched. It gets the desired product to customers' hands faster. Moreover, this methodology makes the process of starting a company less risky. It favors experimentation over elaborate planning, customer feedback over intuition, and iterative design over traditional “big design up front” development.

“Startup success can be engineered by following the process, which means it can be learned, which means it can be taught.”

- Eric Ries, entrepreneur and author of The Lean Startup

Every startup, according to the Lean Startup, is a grand experiment attempting to answer a question. 
"Can this product be built?" is not the right question. Instead, the questions are, "Should we build this product?" and "Can we build a sustainable business around this set of products and services?".

A core component of the Lean Startup methodology is the build-measure-learn feedback loop; the fundamental activity of a startup is to turn ideas into products, measure how customers respond, and then learn whether to pivot or persevere. All successful startup processes should be geared to accelerate that feedback loop. 

The first step is figuring out the problem that needs to be solved and then developing a minimum viable product (MVP) to jumpstart the learning process as quickly as possible. The MVP is an essential component and it represents a prototype of future service or product with a minimum amount of effort and time. The MVP should have key characteristics of a future product, and it is created with the aim to receive feedback on the implemented idea, as well as to make quick relevant adjustments. As a result, a lean approach is one that is customer-centric, focusing on the needs and requirements of the clients. As soon as you validate your idea with the help of a minimum viable product, you can move on to another learning cycle. Once the MVP is established, a startup can work on tuning the engine. This will involve measurement and learning (education) and must include actionable metrics that can demonstrate cause and effect questions.

The unit of progress for Lean Startups is validated learning, a rigorous method for demonstrating progress when one is embedded in the soil of extreme uncertainty. This learning can be validated scientifically, by running experiments that allow us to test each element of our vision. To improve entrepreneurial outcomes, and to hold entrepreneurs accountable, we need to focus on the boring stuff: how to measure progress, how to set up milestones, how to prioritize work. This requires a new kind of accounting, specific to startups, which is called  Innovation Accounting.

Innovation Accounting is based on AAA metrics:

• Actionable metric - ties specific and repeatable actions to observed results
• Accessible metric - simple report
• Auditable metric - you can make changes quickly

Following the Lean way of startup development can take control over the chaos since the method gives the instruments for continuous testing of a vision. It’s almost impossible not to fail, but the Lean methodology gives possibilities to fail quickly and cheaply, and then promptly get up and keep on moving.

# Personal Application

During my last semester in college, COVID-19 Pandemic hit. Instead of being pessimistic about losing hope, I decided to put the Lean methodology into practice and I started my own startup - The DonenziLive Show. It was a game-changer for me; in fact, I started with tuition debt and managed to pay it off.

If you would like to learn more about The Lean Startup, visit http://theleanstartup.com/