Practice Trumps Theory
I just submitted my final revisions to O’Reilly for the printed version of Running Lean which will come out in March 2012. While I had originally intended to just “tidy up” the PDF version for print, I realized earlier this year that a complete rewrite might be necessary which is exactly what I ended up doing.
I’ve been practicing Bikram Yoga for a little over 5 years now. My initial draw to Bikram wasn’t the pursuit of spirituality or the many health benefits, but simply finding an “efficient” exercise routine that I could fit into my busy schedule. Before Bikram, I used to frequent a gym, occasionally run, and meditate. Even at 90 mins a class, Bikram packed in a workout, meditation, and sauna in one. I gave it a shot and have been hooked ever since.
As my practice has deepened, I have drawn many parallels with my practice of yoga and my practice of entrepreneurship – particularly lean.
Transitioning to Lean once you already have a product in the market (with some success) is inherently hard because you have to revisit the past and question that success against your original goals. Then make the hard “pivot versus persevere” decision. At this month’s Austin Lean Startup meetup, Tim Gasper, Jim England and Dhruv Bansal from Infochimps shared a great case-study on just that.
Apparently, a lot of people become entrepreneurs for the wrong reasons – to be cool, to make a lot of money, to be the next [fill_in_blanks]. This was a common theme covered at Startup School 2011 and the topic of a talk I’ve seen Dave McClure deliver in a way only Dave can.
You’ve painstakingly defined and built an MVP through 100+ customer interviews. You’ve collected thousands of emails from potential prospects through a teaser page. You’re ready to launch. But…
Inspired by the short lecture by Kurt Vonnegut on “the simple shapes of stories”, I thought it would be fun to sketch a few shapes of what starting up looks like.
Startups that succeed are those that manage to find a plan that works before running out of resources. While not the most valuable resource, money is like oxygen to your startup – too little and it dies, too much and it can explode. The key is setting yourself up with enough runway to make it through the “humps of iteration”.
Last year, I outlined 10 work hacks I use for managing conflicting pulls on my time in a post titled: “Achieving Flow in a Lean Startup”. This is a follow-up to that post where I’ll describe how I’ve been scaling these tactics since then.
The basic problem is that as a founder you need to be involved in everything – customer development, product development, administration, etc. And that’s just for your startup – You also have a life outside your startup (or should).
Organizing my daily, weekly, monthly routines to flow was a way to balance my “inside the building” versus “outside the building” activities while maintaining sanity. But as my “outside the building” activities have continued to grow, I’ve found it increasingly necessary to find ways to scale beyond myself.
I received lots of great questions on the “How We Build Features” post that I decided to do a follow-on post Q&A-style.
I am the founder of Spark59. I have been rigorously applying Lean Startup techniques to my products which I write about here and recently turned into a book: Running Lean.
“Of all the material out there for entrepreneurs to read, this book stands out as one of the best.”
- David Skok, Matrix Partners
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