2. About me
•Founder of The Testing Ground and Co- Founder of Jumpdesk
•President of the Association of Lean Startups
•Organiser of Singapore Lean Startup Circle
•Mentor at Lean Startup Machine, Startup Leadership Programme, The Scape, Ideasinc, Startup@Singapore, Youth Entrepreneurship Symposium…
•Engineering degree, MBA…and just graduated from NUS law! Woohoo!
4. Definition of a Lean Startup
Validated Learning as the measure of progress
Customer Development
(discover unknown problem and solution)
Lean Product Development e.g. agile dev, design thinking, lean engineering
(create unknown product)
+
6. Why Lean Startup?
•Developed by Eric Riesalong with Steve Blank in response to all the waste that comes from failed startups.
•They realized that startups are taking too long developing their products only to launch them with no customers wanting to buy.
16. Figure Out= Validated Learning
No waste: figure out the right thing to build
as quickly as possible
17. Lean Startup Concept: Build-Measure-Learn
No waste: figure out the right thing to build
as quickly as possible
18. No waste: figure out the right thing to build
as quickly as possible
19. No waste: figure out the right thing to build
as quickly as possible
= Experiment
20. No waste: figure out the right thing to build
as quickly as possible
Image courtesy William Harris
Lean Startup is about making entrepreneurship into a management science
21. No waste: figure out the right thing to build
as quickly as possible
Validated
Learning
22. No waste: figure out the right thing to build
as quickly as possible
The Testing Board helps to keep track of your experiments
23. As quickly as possible= speed
No waste: figure out the right thing to build
as quickly as possible
24. No waste: figure out the right thing to build
as quicklyas possible
Traditional Development
25. No waste: figure out the right thing to build
as quicklyas possible
Lean Startup
26. Why?
You have more tries
Photo Credit: Roger Smith via Compfightcc 2.0
27. Lean Startup Concept: Get out of the Building
No waste: figure out the right thing to build
as quickly as possible
28. “There are no facts inside your building, so get outside
”
-Steve Blank
Photo Credit: http://www.troll.me/images2/steve-blank/keep-calm-and-get-out-of-the-building.jpg
30. State your hypotheses and assumptions
Build your Experiment
Learn
The Testing Board helps you structure your experiments
31. State your hypotheses and assumptions
Build your Experiment
Learn
Get rid of your biases:
1) State your hypotheses (guesses) and your assumptions (beliefs)
2) Forces you to take the view that your startup will fail
32. State your hypotheses and assumptions
Build your Experiment
Learn
Provides Focus and Clarity
1)Know what you are building to test and how you are going to do it
2)Know what signal the customers must give you
33. State your hypotheses and assumptions
Build your Experiment
Learn
Gives you the basis for the changes you are going to make to your business model
36. You can’t reach out to everyone
•So break up a large customer segment into smaller ones
•“Characters living on Sesame Street”
•Big Bird
•Elmo
•Cookie Monster!!
37.
38. WHAT ARE PROBLEMS?
•Specific to the Customers
•“People have difficulty with transportation” is not specific
•“Motorists don’t know when is the best time to avoid a jam” is a problem
39. WHAT ARE PROBLEMS?
•A problem is when a customer has:
•Difficulty doing a task
•Difficulty having a desireor needmet
•…in a particular situation
40. TYPES OF PROBLEMS
Doing a Task
Gettinga Need or Desire Met
Sellingsomething
in a hurry
Highest Price
whenbroke
Findinga Date
when you are bald
Marryingthe right spouse
when very few choices are left
Buying a car
forthe first time
Status recognition
whenpeople are comparing
41. 18 TO 22 YEAR OLD UNIVERSITY STUDENTS
DIFFICULTY FINDING FOOD AT NIGHT FOR A PARTY
These are only your guesses! SO DON’T ARGUE WITH EACH OTHER
42.
43. Assumptions
•What do you believe is true so that your customer or problem hypothesis is true?
44. Assumptions
•Two ways to figuring out assumptions:
•Explaining the hypothesis
•Failing the hypothesis
49. Assumptions
•My startup helping busy working womenwith their difficulty in finding cheap healthy food will fail because
50. Assumptions
•My startup helping busy working womenwith their difficulty in finding cheap healthy food will fail because
•They don’t care about their health
•Someone else is cooking food for them
•They already find it easy to use google
51. Assumptions
What would killmy startup idea
Therefore I am assuming that
They don’t care about their health
They care about their health
Someone else is cooking food for them
Noone else is cooking food for them
They already find it easy to use google
They don’t find googlingfor cheap food easy
52. Listing Assumptions
•VERY IMPORTANT
•Forces you to face your cognitive biases (remember the blind man in a hotel?)
54. 18 TO 22 YEAR OLD UNIVERSITY STUDENTS
DIFFICULTY FINDING FOOD AT NIGHT FOR A PARTY
THIS IS WHAT YOU BELIEVE IS TRUE ABOUT YOUR BELIEF
STUDENTS ORGANISE PARTIES AT THE LAST MINUTE
NO FOOD PLACES ON CAMPUS
55.
56. Minimum Viable Interaction
•What is the smallest interaction you can have with the customer to validate your riskiest assumption?
For now, it’s just a simple face to face interview
57. Customer Acquisition Strategy
•How are you going to get the customers to carry out the MVI?
•E.g.
•Facebook invitation
•Networking events
•Referrals
For now, it’s just a simple “get out of the building” to talk to people off the streets
58.
59. Experiment Steps
•Forces you to state what you need to do and to time box it
•Creates
•Focus
•Urgency
•Common understanding between team members
For now, just state
1)Prepare interview questions (15 minutes)
2)Get out of the building for 2 hours
3)Find customers at 5 star hotels. 2 customers/30 minutes
4)Team member 1 go to Hotel A. Member 2 go to Hotel B ….
60.
61. Success Criteria
•What kind of signal are you expecting so that you have confidence to proceed?
Example:
I expect that 8 out of 10 university students have difficulty finding food at night for their last minute party because there are no food places on campus opened at night
Would you put your money down based on that signal?
73. Testing a problem: The Mum Test (coined by Rob Fitzpatrick)
Can you ask questions such that even your mother won’t be able to lie to you?
74. Carrying out The Mum Test
Talk about their life instead of your idea
•Otherwise Mum will always listen to you talk
75. Carrying out The Mum Test
Ask about specifics in the past instead of generics or opinions about the future
•Mum will always say what you want to hear or cover up discouraging words with generic words
•“Tell me about the last time the problem happened”
•“What did you do?”
76. Carrying out The Mum Test
Talk lessand listen more
“Mum, that’s interesting…tell me more…”
77. Things to look out for
•Too many closed-end questions
•Only use them for qualifying.
•Start questions with What, Who, Why, When and How
78. Things to look out for
•Avoid bad data by anchoring Fluff
•Fluff
•Generic claims (I usually, I always, I never)
•Future-tense promises (I would, I will)
•Dealing with Fluff
•Ask them to bring you to specifics in the past
•When it last happened and how they solved it.
•Avoid “would you ever” questions
79. Do interviews in your team
•One asks questions. The others writes down answers and think about how to improve
•Change to another team member for each new customer
82. Result and Decision
•Result = What did you actually get?
•12/16 have the problem
•Decision:
•Persevere: Pass success criterion. Move to next stage
•Pivot: Did not pass success criterion. Repeat with a change in strategy
•Iterate: Data not enough. Repeat the experiment with more data points.
90. Building the Right thing = the thing customers want and will pay for
No waste: figure out the right thing to build
as quickly as possible
91. But what do you do when you learn that the problem you wanted to solve isnot a problem?
No waste: figure out the right thing to build
as quickly as possible
92. Lean Startup Concept : Pivoting
No waste: figure out the right thing to build
as quickly as possible
93. Pivoting= A change in your business model without a change in visionbased on validated learning
No waste: figure out the right thing to build
as quickly as possible
94.
95.
96. Group Action
For Changing The World
Group Action
For Buying Cheaper Stuff
Pivot
114. A can be described with just wordsfor customers to give you feedback
115. A is hard to describe and is better experienced before the customer can give you feedback
116. Problem: Commuters spend a lot of time waiting for buses
Solution: Information about bus arrival time
Products:
1)Bus arrival guide
2)SMS about bus arrival
3)App with real time information based on GPS
117. Problem: Commuters spend a lot of time waiting for buses
Solution: Share a cab service
Products:
1)Online booking
2)Call a telephone operator
3)Booking app
118. Problem: Commuters spend a lot of time waiting for buses
Solution: Tell you when to leave work to avoid crowd
Products:
1)Whatsappgroup
2)Blog
3)Phonecall
119. So it’s more important to think about the solution first.
Then you build a Minimum Viable Product to test the solution with the Customers
121. What is an MVP?
“The minimum amount of effort you have to do to complete exactly one turn of the Build-Measure-Learn feedback loop.”
-Eric Ries
122. In Simpler Terms
The MVP is the fastest way to achieve learning about the customer with the least effort
123. Pre-selling MVP
Exchange of product for some form of currency: time, money, information or work.
Tests the Riskiest Assumption associated with your Solution Hypothesis.
134. Measure of Success
Time
Small Failures
But Learning
Quickly
= Changes in Strategy without Change in Vision
= Pivoting
Finding Product-Market Fit
Getting to Success
Small Failures
But Still Learning
Quickly
135. But beware, Lean Startup can be a bit confusing
Strategy Level
Tactical Level
Product Level
136. oFor Seed Stage Startups
o20 –Day Programme to develop your customer development skills
oIncludes the use of a space at Orchard Road
oHelps you answer three important questions at the end:
Is the problem worth solving?
Does any one want your solution?
Do you want to do it?
137. oGet the focus
oComes with a 150 page guidebook and Startup Testing Boards
o6 hours of face to face workshops together with other startups in the region
oMentoring with lead mentors and participant mentors
oSave money
oGet access to Powtoons
oYour own urlshortener
oLanding page creators
oComes with the use of TTG
oJoin a community
oMember of Association of Lean Startups
oAlumni of TTG