The Lean Startup

That's what you get when you try to build an activity philosophy on unsubstantiated analogies from unrelated fields. Less dumb than the whole agile nonsense, but non-representative and privileged at its core.

It's fine. I'll spoil it for you: It boils down to "experiment and do more the things that work and less of the things that don't, even if that means you end up doing something completely different than you set out to accomplish."

My expectations were super low, and the book turned out to be not bad. Yes, it's too long but there're good bits in every chapter. Yes, case studies are childish or speculative but it was written when times were easier.
The most important idea is that you need to create Build-Measure-Learn feedback Loop. The sooner you close and optimize it, the better.

For me if’s really hard to rate this thing. It surely didn’t age that well, but even if i consider it’s age it is lacking in a couple of areas. Things that are rather easy to understand are explained in detail again and again. On the other hand rather complex things are just mentioned without much depths. Sometimes you get the feeling the only reason why he added a third example for the easy to understand concepts is to show of his consulting clients to boost his ego. It really has tons of ideas that get you thinking. Sadly you need other resources to actually implement the interesting bits because with this book you just don’t have enough understanding of those ideas and their consequences.

Great advice for beginning any kind of business venture. Management, validated learning, innovation, and the build-measure-learn feedback loop were some of the core principles to the lean startup.

There's nothing wrong with the idea behind the book - actually, it deserves five stars on it's own. However, it quickly becomes really tiresome with the repeating mantra of (paraphrasing) "and this is how it's done by the top 2% startups of silicon valley". Feels like Eric has a lot of great things to say, and without the constant reminders about why i should listen + less lecturing, I'd love it.

Great overview of the Lean Startup theory of business development using validated learning techniques to "build, measure, learn". Iterating product features in short cycles, structured to prove or disprove measurable hypotheses; this is one of the books as the basis of the agile development theory. Very interesting read and very useful ideas for any type of business.

Ok, but too generic. Never actually says how to do things, and much of what it advocates are - gasp - classic engineering advice.

Good read for entrepreneurs, whether in startups or established companies. The writing isn't terribly compelling but the ideas are very useful.

An interesting read, with insights that might be useful in stirring innovation in either a startup or an established business. Yes, there is quite a bit of padding in the form of case studies and anecdotes. Anyone who wants to cut straight to the chase without the bother of examples might be better off reading one of the published summaries.

A possible downside is that, unlike some of the books about some of the other agile methodologies, it merely gives suggestions and things to watch out for. It doesn't attempt to be a recipe book, giving you a list of steps to follow that will give you agility without having to think too much about it.

Overall a nice book. I will definitely read it again when the need will arise.

It presents a lot of business cases and a few times makes gratuitous statements ("successful entrepreneurs had the foresight, the ability, and the tools to discover which plans were working brilliantly and which were misguided").

The text is more of a narrative than a clear explanation of the "lean startup" process (the useful advice is scattered all around the text). This could mean that you're not going to get all the value by reading the book only once and taking notes. But the point is well made and the suggestions are at least worth a try.

The references at the end are just great :)

Clear, easy to read book about managing the unknown in organizations.

Basically the method consists in identifying the assumptions and then testing them one by one as earlier as possible.