5 common misconceptions about lean startups
A lot of startups today spend significant time perfecting their ideation when it comes to delivering ‘the perfect product’ to their customers. Months and years pass by before they as much as show their product, even in its primitive stage, to potential buyers. Once the product is finally out in the market and there are no takers for it, the founders realise that their startup has tanked. Here's where lean startups come into the picture. The lean startup module helps startups to ideate and manufacture their product and make it reach their consumer faster. It teaches startups how to grow a business in the shortest time span. It is a conventional approach to new product development. That said, here are five common misconceptions about lean startups:
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The lean approach is of no use to established companies
Founders of established companies often have the wrong perception that the lean startup technique is pointless and of no use to them as their organisation has already matured and reached a certain benchmark. In reality, any program or enterprise can benefit from the lean startup technique if it is employed correctly.
‘Lean is synonymous with cheap and thinking small’
Customers often believe that the initial iterations of products are cheap and faulty. On the contrary, the first iteration of a product is the most rational way to test an innovation with consumers before fine-tuning the process. When startups reach out to their potential audience in the early stages, it saves them time and resources on revamping the product. Customers might not be sure about their needs, but testing the product is still a smart decision to make.
‘Lean startups are small-scale startups’
Contrary to popular belief, there is nothing wrong with raising venture capital. Several lean startups are resourceful and are able to deploy huge amounts of capital. Their disciplined approach works in their favor as they know when to spend money, after the basic elements of the business model have been empirically validated.
‘Lean startups focus more on customer feedback rather than their vision’
Lean startups are driven by a powerful vision, and they are exacting about testing each aspect of this vision against reality. They make use of actionable analytics, consumer development, and split-testing as vehicles to understand how they can make their vision a success. Neither do they blindly do what customers tell them to, nor do they mechanically try to optimise numbers.
‘Lean startups rarely succeed’
A lot of people believe that lean startups are destined to fail. That is far from the truth. While lean startups might stumble and fall in a race, they often get back up faster than you think and make up for lost time. As long as you're learning from every failure, you're allowed to go wrong.
A lean strategy helps budding entrepreneurs create actionable hypotheses to test and record learnings for future decisions. It is important to clear out all the misconceptions about a business theory before you discard it. Only then will your venture embrace prosperity.
