Lean Startup Quotes

“Listen to your customers, not your competitors.”
― Joel Spolsky

“Life's too short to build something nobody wants.”
― Ash Maurya, Running Lean: Iterate from Plan A to a Plan That Works

“I will learn by screwing up.”
― Greg Bear, Hull Zero Three

“Perfectionism is a disease. Procrastination is a disease. ACTION is the cure.”
― Richie Norton

“The more detailed we made our plans, the longer our cycle times became”
― Donald G. Reinertsen, The Principles of Product Development Flow: Second Generation Lean Product Development

“If a picture is worth a thousand words, a prototype is worth a thousand meetings”
― IDEO.org

“Visionaries are especially afraid of a false negative: that customers will reject a flawed MVP that is too small or too limited.
[…]
The solution to this dilemma is a commitment to iteration. You have to commit to a locked-in agreement—ahead of time—that no matter what comes of testing the MVP, you will not give up hope. Successful entrepreneurs do not give up at the first sign of trouble, nor do they persevere the plan right into the ground. Instead, they process a unique combination of perseverance and flexibility.”
― Eric Ries, The Lean Startup

“We should not prioritize on the basis of project profitability, but rather on how this profitability is affected by delay.”
― Donald G. Reinertsen, The Principles of Product Development Flow: Second Generation Lean Product Development

“we have some good ideas here. But the only way to know if they’re workable is to try to make them fail. If we fail to fail, then maybe we’re on the right track.”
― Orson Scott Card, The Lost Gate

“Consumers love novelty; businesses just call it risk”
― Ben Yoskovitz

“QUIT = Quickly Uphold Important Things”
― Richie Norton

“A good metric is a ratio or a rate. Accountants and financial analysts have several ratios they look at to understand, at a glance, the fundamental health of a company. You need some, too.
There are several reasons ratios tend to be the best metrics:
• Ratios are easier to act on. Think about driving a car. Distance traveled is informational. But speed—distance per hour—is something you can act on, because it tells you about your current state, and whether you need to go faster or slower to get to your destination on time.
• Ratios are inherently comparative. If you compare a daily metric to the same metric over a month, you’ll see whether you’re looking at a sudden spike or a long-term trend. In a car, speed is one metric, but speed right now over average speed this hour shows you a lot about whether you’re accelerating or slowing down.
• Ratios are also good for comparing factors that are somehow opposed, or for which there’s an inherent tension. In a car, this might be distance covered divided by traffic tickets. The faster you drive, the more distance you cover—but the more tickets you get. This ratio might suggest whether or not you should be breaking the speed limit.”
― Alistair Croll, Lean Analytics: Use Data to Build a Better Startup Faster

“You don’t learn through sales calls, it’s not customer validation.”
― Jason Cohen

“The goal of going Agile is to hedge risk by doing incremental-iterative development, increasing overall process efficiency, and the quality of the final output.”
― Salil Jha

“Agile Methodology: Learn from how terror networks work.

AGILE methodology is about being able to iterate and reiterate till you get it right. You are always at the start and the end at the same time till the launch. You are more nimble than the waterfall method and more resourceful than the lean method.”
― Vineet Raj Kapoor

“At the heart of Lean management is giving employees the necessary time and resources to improve their own work. This means creating a work environment that supports experimentation, failure, and learning, and allows employees to make decisions that affect their jobs. This also means creating space for employees to do new, creative, value-add work during the work week—and not just expecting them to devote extra time after hours.”
― Nicole Forsgren, Accelerate: Building and Scaling High Performing Technology Organizations