The Lean Entrepreneur : How Visionaries Create Products, Innovate with New Ventures, and Disrupt Markets

**You are not a Visionary... yet.** **__The Lean Entrepreneur__** **shows you how to become one.** Most of us believe entrepreneurial visionaries are born, not made. Our media glorify business outliers like Bezos, Branson, Gates, and Jobs as heroes with X-ray vision who can look to the future, see clearly what will be, imagine a fully formed product or experience and then, simply make the vision real.Many in our entrepreneur community still believe that to be visionary, we must merely execute on a seemingly good idea and ignore all doubt. With this mindset, companies build doomed products in a vacuum; enterprises make ill-fated innovation investment decisions; and employees and shareholders come along for an uncomfortable ride. Falling prey to the Myth of the Visionary confuses talented entrepreneurs, product managers, innovators and investors. It leads us to heartbreaking, costly and __preventable__ failures in new product... "Advice for entrepreneurs looking to build a business people actually want to invest inDesigned to reduce waste by testing the market for a product early and often, the concept of the lean startup has been embraced around the world, and successful entrepreneurs and authors Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits join the conversation with their own personal experiences. The Lean Entrepreneur is designed to make lean startup and customer development principles immediately actionable no matter what the industry, size, or stage. This must-read book presents a lexicon of concepts and a universally applicable road map to success, as well as illustrative examples of innovative approaches to industry-specific disruption ranging from technology startups to consumer packaged goods to music to investment and finance. Providing a step-by-step approach to best practices, and giving readers a business model analysis guide, the book is rich in cases studies, illustrative graphics, worksheets, and exercises for a truly immersive guide to starting or improving a company. Invaluable reading for all readers in all businesses, the book teaches entrepreneurs how to approach risk head-on and test market ideas immediately, foster stronger customer relations, test different business model risks, and create a customer funnel based on buyers' process in order to eliminate unnecessary time and effort. A lean entrepreneur has already bought into lean startup, customer development, design thinking, and other iterative, customer-centric methods of product development. The lean entrepreneur wants to know how to apply these to their business. In other words: how to get started tomorrow. This book shows the way. Expands on the core ideas of the "Lean Startup" concept, adding the use of powerful, low-cost analytics to the mix Explains how earlier, more frequent market research can save a business time and money Incorporates cases studies, graphics, worksheets, and exercises to help readers better understand the key concepts expounded in the text Packed with information that can help business at all levels of development--from initial ideas to established companies looking to innovate--The Lean Entrepreneur is the field guide for creating innovative businesses"-- Provided by publisher You are not a Visionary... yet. The Lean Entrepreneur shows you how to become one. Most of us believe entrepreneurial visionaries are born, not made. Our media glorify business outliers like Bezos, Branson, Gates, and Jobs as heroes with X-ray vision who can look to the future, see clearly what will be, imagine a fully formed product or experience and then, simply make the vision real. Many in our entrepreneur community still believe that to be visionary, we must merely execute on a seemingly good idea and ignore all doubt. With this mindset, companies build doomed products in a vacuum; enterprises make ill-fated innovation investment decisions; and employees and shareholders come along for an uncomfortable ride. Falling prey to the Myth of the Visionary confuses talented entrepreneurs, product managers, innovators and investors. It leads us to heartbreaking, costly and preventable failures in new product and venture development. The Lean Entrepreneur moves us beyond this myth. It combines powerful customer insight, rapid experimentation and easily actionable data from the Lean Startup methodology to empower individuals, companies, and entire teams to evolve their vision, solve problems, and create value at the speed of the Internet. Anyone can be visionary. The Lean Entrepreneur shows you how to: Apply actionable tips, tricks and hacks from successful lean entrepreneurs. Leverage the Innovation Spectrum to disrupt existing markets and create new ones. Drive strategies for efficient market testing with Minimal Viable Products. Engage customers with Viability Testing and radically reduce time and budget for product development. Rapidly create cross-functional innovation teams that devour roadblocks and set new benchmarks. Bring your organization critical focus on the power of loyal customers and valuable products you can build to serve them. Leverage instructive tools, skill-building exercises, and worksheets along with bonus online videos.

The Lean Entrepreneur shows you how to become a visionary

"A sprawling overview of some of the biggest ideas in the start-up world."
—SETH GODIN, Author The Icarus Deception

"The Lean Startup methodology has become a fundamentally critical approach to creating and building a startup. Brant and Patrick explain in a very accessible way, with extended case studies from a variety of exciting, contemporary startups, with awesome bonus illustrations from everyone's favorite robotic dinosaur, Fake Grimlock. If you are a startup entrepreneur, this is a must-read book for your startup journey."
—Brad Feld, Managing Director, Foundry Group; co-founder, TechStars; and creator of the Startup Revolution series of books

"If you're an entrepreneur, making stupid mistakes is inevitable. The Lean methodology will help you cut down on them drastically. Do yourself a favor and pick up The Lean Entrepreneur. It will make your journey into the unknown much, much smoother."
—Julien Smith, New York Times bestselling co-author of Trust Agents

"This fascinating new book shows that at the intersection of disruption and lean company thinking, there is a new world of: lean entrepreneurship—empowered individuals who bring the world kicking and screaming into the future. I can't wait."
—Paul Kedrosky

"The Lean Entrepreneur cruises at 50,000 feet with a view of the context we are operating in today's economy. At the same time, it dives deep into key ways the new startup tools, frameworks, and mechanisms can be leveraged to take advantage of a world filled with uncertainty and opportunity."
—Scott Case, CEO, Startup America Partnership

Startup Revolution -- Vision, Values, And Culture -- All The Fish In The Sea -- Wading In The Value Stream -- Diving In -- Viability Experiments -- Data's Double-edged Sword -- The Valley Of Death -- Real Visionaries Have Funnel Vision -- The Final Word. Brant Cooper And Patrick Vlaskovits. Includes Index. #3 The New York Times Bestseller#10 The New York Times Monthly Business Bestseller USA Today Bestseller Amazon.com Editors' Picks for Best Books of the Month in Business and Leadership