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20 July 2022 | 4 min read
“Startup success can be engineered by following the right process, which means it can be learned, which means it can be taught.” – [Eric Ries]
Eric Ries coined the term Lean Startup to describe a methodology geared towards supporting organizations to complete phases of experimentation and iterate on these when looking for a sustainable business model. At the root of Lean, we find the BML process, which in layman’s terms means: Build – Measure – Learn/Iterate.
In this article, we will discuss the implications of this decision and what it could mean for the future of automotive transportation and the diffusion of more and more electric vehicles.
In terms of how a lean startup behaves, its actions can be broken into these three above mentioned steps:
Build → Building experiments where the entrepreneur acts as a scientist. He/She, through the manipulation of controlled variables, notes the variation of independent variables. These are used to test the business model hypotheses. There are tons of types of experiments to test, and Minimum
A concept coined by Ries stresses the impact of learning in new product development. According to him, an MVP is the version of a brand new product that allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort.
A) Pivoting is the “all in” phase in which the action of radically changing one/more dimensions takes place to formulate new hypotheses and test them again.
B) Iterating is more “calm and steady”, it’s about pushing and promoting one/more changes in the product/service/business model to test the new hypotheses.
C) Escalating is the “go for it” phase, where the entrepreneur understands the business model might be the right one and is willing to invest more in it to obtain economies of scale.
D) Giving up can simply be the “game over” phase. It occurs when tests, feedback, and experiments clearly show the business vision and the product/service are not able to generate a solid business model.
In the early stages, BML most likely generates obstacles and bad news. That’s why keep following the learning – feedback loop is important, pivot repeatedly, and then persevere. Every failed MVP is a good chance to learn, grow, and recommit to the feedback loop. Perseverance is the secret ingredient to the success of the Business – Measure – Learn process.
A Californian file hosting service providing cloud storage, personal cloud, file synchronization, and client software. It is one of the most suitable examples to give an insight into the application and positive outcome of this framework applied at a company level.
Dropbox developed an MVP: a 3 mins screencast showing to consumers what Dropbox was able to do. In just a couple of days, dozens of people gave their opinion on it, sending a huge amount of feedback to the company, which helped them develop a fast-evolving, one-of-a-kind solution in the market.
Some numbers? With a Lean-oriented approach, in 15 months Dropbox increased registered users from 100,000 to 4 million.
1- Risk is harsh: giving all your energy and time to something that people might not want at all is the biggest risk.
2- Holding back is worse: having a production timeline is important, and not launching or delaying is painful. But not learning for haste is fatal.
3- Feedback storm: put something in people’s hands and get concrete feedback asap.
4- Authenticity: Be honest with your target. Speak truly.
Not all startups choose to follow a lean methodology. Those that do, however, may exponentially increase their chances of long-term viability for the simple reason that the build-measure-learn framework forces innovation.
The model of testing in small steps, measuring, and changing based on the gathered data is very useful for a startup that has little time, few resources, and wants to grow fast.
Lean startup (LS) in 2hire is indeed a mental approach of our company . It made us understand how to structure the entire team and how to try to have this methodology at the root of everything: how to launch new services, products, and initiatives, and how to keep working on innovation.
Lean’s final goal is fostering innovation, but innovation does not only mean something new, it’s about proving economical viability, technical feasibility, and therefore its success in the market.
According to Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO, an MVP must be desirable, viable, and feasible. Many companies rush headlong into the implementation of their MVP without considering one of the most valuable resources: the user’s point of view.
That’s why many products/services fail: the developed idea doesn’t actually solve a user’s problem, in the eyes of the users the MVP is not desirable.
Hence why Build, Measure and Iterate is part of the 2hire process. Those are the principles for what we do in 2hire. That’s the framework we use. It’s a universal framework that our team adopts in the development of our solutions: from our rental product to how you start to do communication. Every project developed in 2hire has an underlying footprint that is based on this approach. The outcomes produced are measured on a weekly/bi-weekly basis by analyzing the projects we are carrying out.
Through retrospectives and regular meetings, we can track the results and progress of our work. Notably, retrospectives in 2hire are done every two weeks, we do a review of what was done and the obtained results, giving us goals for the next two weeks and correcting if something is not working as expected.
According to this, a great example to showcase how we adopt a process of evaluating the state of progress and measuring results afterward is the application of the Agile Methodology within one of our development teams at 2hire: Phoenix.
We use these retrospectives to analyze and measure results, but also to gather feedback on how we can improve to move forward better and faster.
From what we know, from what we’ve understood so far, Lean methodology can really be useful for a young company, a startup, but also larger companies. As long as we continue to be satisfied, we will continue to use lean methodology to keep us at the cutting edge of mobility, to reach our final goal of connecting all vehicles and making millions of people move.
Sales and Marketing Associate at 2hire
I love running and daydreaming losing count of the distance I’m covering, cooking (and especially eating) and Drake is my spirit guide.
