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  • The Lean Startup

  • How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses
  • By: Eric Ries
  • Narrated by: Eric Ries
  • Length: 8 hrs and 38 mins
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars (2,704 ratings)
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The Lean Startup cover art

The Lean Startup

By: Eric Ries
Narrated by: Eric Ries
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Editor reviews

Learn the key to having a thriving startup in the crucial unabridged audiobook The Lean Startup, written and narrated by Eric Ries. Listen to Ries define the startup market and hear the reasons why so many startups never make it successfully. Ries points out important factors that are essential to get right in the first year of your startup. At the forefront of his advice is the fundamental ability for startup owners to be flexible in their business plans. The market is constantly changing and finding a niche isn’t always enough to creating a successful long-term business within it. Available now from Audible.

Summary

Most startups fail. But many of those failures are preventable. The Lean Startup is a new approach being adopted across the globe, changing the way companies are built and new products are launched.

Eric Ries defines a startup as an organization dedicated to creating something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty. This is just as true for one person in a garage or a group of seasoned professionals in a Fortune 500 boardroom. What they have in common is a mission to penetrate that fog of uncertainty to discover a successful path to a sustainable business.

The Lean Startup approach fosters companies that are both more capital efficient and that leverage human creativity more effectively. Inspired by lessons from lean manufacturing, it relies on “validated learning”, rapid scientific experimentation, as well as a number of counter-intuitive practices that shorten product-development cycles, measure actual progress without resorting to vanity metrics, and learn what customers really want. It enables a company to shift directions with agility, altering plans inch by inch, minute by minute.

Rather than wasting time creating elaborate business plans, The Lean Startup offers entrepreneurs - in companies of all sizes - a way to test their vision continuously, to adapt and adjust before it’s too late. Ries provides a scientific approach to creating and managing successful startups in a age when companies need to innovate more than ever.

©2011 Eric Ries (P)2011 Random House

Critic reviews

"Eric has created a science where previously there was only art. A must read for every serious entrepreneur—and every manager interested in innovation." (Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz, Opsware Inc., and Netscape)
"At Asana, we've been lucky to benefit from Eric's advice firsthand; this book will enable him to help many more entrepreneurs answer the tough questions about their business." (Dustin Moskovitz, co-founder of Facebook and Asana)
"In business, a ‘lean’ enterprise is sustainable efficiency in action. Eric Ries’ revolutionary Lean Startup method will help bring your new business idea to an end result that is successful and sustainable. You’ll find innovative steps and strategies for creating and managing your own startup while learning from the real-life successes and collapses of others. This book is a must read for entrepreneurs who are truly ready to start something great!” (Ken Blanchard, coauthor of The One Minute Manager and The One Minute Entrepreneur.)

What listeners say about The Lean Startup

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars

A mixed bag

An interesting listen. The content of the book is interesting, detailed and comprehensive. The case studies used in the piece are fantastic and in terms of gaining value from the book I have already been able to apply some of the techniques in my day job.



However, the only negative would be the delivery of the content. This audio is not something that you will look forward to listening to.. although you can see the benefit in listening to the book. It is similar to a child being force fed their greens. In the sense you know that their may be some benefit in listening to the audio but you would rather eat sweets or watch TV in my case.



It is worth a credit however, sample the audio before you purchase as the delivery may not suit.

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15 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Great ideas but...

Eric's vision is really revolutionary in terms of product development and marketing. The lean startup approach changes everything. Everything that was so drastically implemented and seamlessly integrated in the industrial era by blue collar workers and then, in modern (yet rooted in past) corporations by white collar workers.
However, Eric fails to explain his ideas in a way that very small businesses could understand, apply and integrate. Much of what he said was not (yet... ;) applicable to my situation as a small startup and hence felt boring/irrelevant to me.
Focusing too much on large, already established businesses or even corporations I had a feeling Eric with his great ideas has actually never left "the aristocracy" of Silicon Valley.
For that I have to search elsewhere.

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13 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Quite simply the best business book of the year

I've read a lot of business books (and also written one) and this is the best I've seen in a long time. It could just as easily have been titled "The Scientific Startup" but I guess that might have scared people off. It outlines a scientific method for planning and running a startup that prevents costly errors and ensures the entrepreneur(s) learn enough about their business and the market in which it operates to decide their next step. It's essentially about running sequential experiments testing the fundamental assumptions about the business (eg "will customers buy this?") in the quickest, cheapest and most effective way so the startup is a learning organisation (indeed that, rather than the pursuit of money is the point of a startup according to Ries).

This is the first book I've ever listened to, bought on Kindle and then bought the paperback so I can scribble. There's plenty of hyperbole around when it comes to business books but this is a radical, and much needed, shift to the way startups are run. First class.

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12 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Startups and product developers should take note

Humble and persuasive, the author highlights through his own struggles how he came to apply a lean manufacturing mindset to software development. What is particularly fascinating to me is how well this translates to all business startups not just to product development. Excellent stuff. @upfinder

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8 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

It has changed how I do business

This has completely changed the way I have recently launched two businesses. It is brilliant.

Be patient and the blocks will fall into place.

The text has inspired me to seek regular new business ideas to build and launch. I've started helping two friends already who have bought into the idea.

I'm not sure if it's a new idea, but it's the first time I've been exposed to the ethos.

A really good read.

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6 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    2 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

Not for me

Quite an interesting concept. However found the repartition of concepts, boring and tedious. The concept of iteration testing and batching is used in multiple titles especially in black box thinking which is a far easier and interesting read. The book is probably useful for technology start ups, but as an IT professional in the retail market, I struggled to relate. The only interesting concept I took away was the 5 why’s.

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5 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

Very Specific

What would have made The Lean Startup better?

This book is about a guy who made cash in silicon valley - its autobiographical to the point of being little use to anyone, unless they operate in the same field.

What didn’t you like about Eric Ries’s performance?

Very monotone voice

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4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars
  • ID
  • 23-11-16

Not that great.

Better for business owners who develop computers. Not so good for the physical product side of things.

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

Unfortunate and not useful.

I’m also a startup founder that has built fairly successful businesses at a similar valuation to what has been discussed in this book. Unfortunately, the writer of this book is obviously not the CEO and not the person making the decisions. He comes from a sheltered decision making process where he is acting much more like an employee than a leader. It is a well written book, and the author seems nice. Unfortunately, I don’t believe he possesses the startup skills he believes he does.

He is not the founder who made the difficult decisions, and did not go further to create additional valuable startups. He decided to write books instead as a tech lead. But tech leads are not founders, and there is little leadership advice found here. There are, unfortunately better books out there.

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars

don't waste your money, poor quality book

difficult to listen to, terrible delivery, weak vocal. boring content, even for someone looking to understand more of this area. the content made me lose interest, even in an area I'm interested in.

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2 people found this helpful