The Lean Startup offers a framework for startups to test, learn, and adjust their strategy through cycles of continuous improvement. The core of the framework is Build-Measure-Learn feedback loop to learn what customers really want and verify the assumptions to the value hypothesis and growth hypothesis through validated learning. A few key notes here.

First it can be learnt. A startup is a human institution designed to create new product or service under conditions of extreme uncertainty. Its success can be engineered by following the right process which means it can be learnt and entrepreneurship is one kind of management.

Second the goal of a startup is to figure out the right thing to build – the thing customers want and will pay for as quickly as possible. Any action that does not contribute to learning about what creates value for customers is a form of waste. So the right question to ask is “Should this product be built?” and “Can we build a sustainable business around this set of products and services?”. Success is not delivering features, instead success is learning how to solve the customer’s problem.

Third the products a startup builds are really experiments. The learning about how to build a sustainable business is the outcome of those experiments. Test the most important assumptions (value and growth hypothesis) first with a minimum viable product towards early adopters with experiments to enable the cycle of Build-Measure-Learn. Measurement with right metrics matters, you need a clear baseline metric, a hypothesis about what will improve that metric, and a set of experiments designed to test that hypothesis.

Fourth common tools for adoption. Split-tests help you quickly identify what features matter to customers and which do not, continuous deployment releases small new features all the time. The 5 Whys to figure out the real root cause of failures.