Mustafa Degerli - 2016 - Technology Entrepreneurship and Lean Startups - Reading Reflection - Why the Lean Start-Up Changes Everything – Steve Blank

1. Technology Entrepreneurship and Lean Startups - Reading Reflection
Why the Lean Start-Up Changes Everything – Steve Blank
Mustafa Degerli - MD
Page 1 of 2
In this paper, I provide my summary and reflections as bulleted items on behalf of the “Why
the Lean Start-Up Changes Everything” article by Steve Blank.
 There is a significant amount of “failure” regarding the start-ups. For sure, there are
remarkably successful start-ups as well. However, the number of failures is remarkably
higher. As noted in the pertinent article, mainly because of not fully understanding the
customer and the appropriate environments, a significant amount of start-ups fail.
Essentially, I fairly agree with the conclusion made in the article. I see many initiatives
which truly fails to understand customers and their realities. That is the very exact
reason for their failure. For achieving and sustaining the success, a constant focus on
customers or potential customers is a must. Otherwise, we only sustain our very
interest(s) which should not be the main focus for start-ups.
 Successful lean start-ups should prioritise trialling, customer response, and iterative
approach over all-encompassing planning, intuition, and gigantic blocks. Truly, it is
reasonably normal. Lean start-ups have to be very effective and efficient. That is, there
is nothing to waste but to optimise. Here, a point I want to underline is that, the lean
start-up approach is not just only for smalls as noted by the author. It is there for
everyone and every-size who want to be cost, quality, scope, and schedule effective and
efficient. These are the basic reasons why we ought to prefer experimentation and even
prototyping in place of extensive planning; choose customer involvement instead of
assumption; and favour small and manageable meaningful units in place of sometimes
overwhelming but fairly giant blocks. In total, with lean start-up approach we wish more
“manageable” approach and realisation. From my experiences, I do know many
initiatives who wasted their time, money and energy for never ending planning and
unmanageable development efforts. That’s why, we need to balance constraints and
actively involve customers and potential ones to have a venture to improve, refine and
innovate our products and services accordingly.
 Another point underlined in the pertinent text is that we have to be aware of that failure
is a part of work and journey. While following the approach, we should be aware of that
there will be some failures which should make us refine, re-design and even re-innovate
our strategies. It is quite natural that there will be some “fluctuations.” However,
successful performers need to appreciate them and act accordingly to benefit from them
as opportunities not the exact threats that may end their lives in the start-up journey.

2. Technology Entrepreneurship and Lean Startups - Reading Reflection
Why the Lean Start-Up Changes Everything – Steve Blank
Mustafa Degerli - MD
Page 2 of 2
 With lean start-up approach, we have to constantly test our hypotheses and refine them
consistent with the customer inputs and our strategic goals regarding the products and/or
services that we want to achieve and sustain. We should be able to learn from the process
rather than constantly following the ways which is quite impractical sometimes. If we
have customers or the potential ones, we should never lose the interaction with them.
We need to “know” and “understand” them as they are remarkably crucial for our even
existence and survival. For accomplishment, we need to be both very quick and
responsive. This whole process and performance shall be customer-centric and fairly
speedy since we need to invent and innovate for our success which is mostly determined
and fairly governed by our customers or the potential ones.
 With agility introduced by the lean start-up approach, we first should concentrate on the
critical, vital and prominent parts. This is important as we don’t have anything to
uncultivated and we need to be so fast that we fleetingly achieve a break-even regarding
our initiatives.
 Today, industrial and economic realities show that what most significant is customers.
For example, in marketing instead of 4Ps (Product, Place, Promotion, and Price), we
now have 4Cs (customer value, customer convenience, customer communication, and
customer cost) which emphasise the customer’s very importance for success. We cannot
overlook them as they are the ones for whom we create products and services. One of
the main things that is very important introduced by the lean start-up approach is
customer means a lot more than that of we can imagine. Classic or traditional approach
sometimes fail to understand this as they are mostly concerned with the product or
services instead of the one who will use or benefit from the products.
 Consequently, pertinent article stresses the agility regarding the success of start-ups.
Confidently, I agree with the position that is taken by the author of the text. However, I
need to underline that we also need to balance our strategic goals and objectives with
customers’ expectations and hopes. Customers are perpetual factors which we should
never ignore but we also need to have strategic goals which must be refined and
improved by customer inputs and environmental factors. Furthermore, I think we should
be aware of that the lean start-up approach is not a silver bullet. It is a means, not an end
in itself. We should benefit from the approach to the best extent possible yet we need to
have additional factors (good idea, good team, good processes, good technologies, and
etc.) for achieving and sustaining success.