As you consider building your own minimum viable product, let this simple rule suffice: remove any feature, process, or effort that does not contribute directly to the learning you seek.
Eric Ries – Lean Startup Author
Eric Ries is the author of the Lean Startup. The idea of the Lean Startup is to start small, test for success, tweak the business model, replicate the model, and scale. Sounds easy. But, really hard to do successfully.
What the millions of unemployed workers going to do in COVID time? This may be a great time to test out your business idea and do a lean start up. If an idea works with a prototype tested against real customers, this can be the beginning of a successful business model. If the idea works then the product is brought to market. If the idea doesn’t work, you pivot and the process starts again with a new model, product, service, or prototype.
Startup world is not for the faint of heart. A startup has a lot of moving parts: Customers x Sales x Operations x Marketing x Engineering x Fulfillment x Investors x Magic x Self management = Success. Remember basic algebra – if any of these factors becomes 0, result is you failed. Do the math, there are n key success factors and 2n – 1 ways to fail and only 1 way to succeed. In our previous equation, there are 9 success factors so there are 1,999,999,999 (almost 2 billion to the math challenged) ways to fail and 1 way to succeed.[i]
So, what area should you do a startup. Tip: choose carefully. For example, tech startup land is full of testosterone. It’s not inclusive or diverse. Asian male VUCANs excel at math and coding. The monoculture of nerdism is global.
Is the startup work ethic good or bad? Is work a means to an end, such as fame or money? It may be for some if not many. And that’s okay. This group of VUCANs understand where they’re going and what they have to do to get there.
Work Lesson Earned: Why is the hustling it or 996 work ethic necessary? It’s a matter of numbers. Most products, startups, retailers fail. The numbers are stunning as up to 90% of small businesses fail. The critical issue is whether the founders learn from failure and have the grit to try again.
[i] The Right It, Alberto Savoia, 2019.