What is the Lean Startup methodology?

leanstartup-400x250.png

 

The lean startup method advocates developing products that consumers have already demonstrated they desire so that a market will already exist as soon as the product is launched. As opposed to developing a product and then hoping that demand will emerge.

By employing lean startup principles, product developers can gauge consumer interest in the product and determine how the product might need to be refined. This process is called validated learning and it can be utilized to avoid the unnecessary use of resources in product creation and development. Through lean startup, if an idea is likely to fail, it will fail quickly and cheaply instead of slowly and expensively, hence the term “fail-fast.”

This animated video is a great 3 minute summary of the concepts and also provides an example of lean startup in practice.