Transcript
“THE FOUR STEPS TO THE EPIPHANY” BY STEVEN G. BLANK
I strongly recommend anybody that wants to open a new startup and start it’s own business to read this book because it has the merit of launch the lean startup approach to new ventures. And it provides a practical and proven four step process, which is called the customer development process to startups, and basically the idea is that with the application of this process, startups can truly understand the needs of their customers and understand what makes the difference between a successful startup and a start up that go out of the market. For the first time, there starts truly stressing the need of rapid iteration, the customer feedback, the customer interaction and hypothesis testing. The interesting thing about this book is that also for the first time, it goes away from the idea that startup to be successful need just a business plan and to have a solid and a valuable product. But for the first time they truly inspire and get the idea that the important thing is to truly understand what are the needs and problems experienced by the customers. And to get to know them and to then follow a loop of quick iteration and testing in order to validate the learning and the research that has been done. So it’s definitely a must read for anyone that wants to become an entrepreneur.
“THE LEAN STARTUP” BY ERIC RIES
This book provides a scientific approach to creating and managing successful startups. And I like because it practically and very clear explains and teaches how to drive a startup, when to pivot and when to persevere. And the idea is to eliminate uncertainty. It provides with the tools in order to keep in mind, what is the vision of the entrepreneur, and also to keep on reconsidering the vision in order to aligning it always better to the customer needs and customer perspective. He also explains how to apply the build, measure, learn feedback loop, which is strongly aligned to the lean startup movement and management training. And some key questions that were raised throughout this book is, should my product be built at all? Does it make sense to build and to start building this product? Is it desired? And can I build a sustainable business around this product? And I think that these are two very important, very relatable question that any entrepreneur should ask himself or herself before starting the company. So the important thing, that also a decrease is the stressing is that you first need to figure out what is the problem experienced by your customer, but also what are their needs and desires? And then the idea is to quickly go building an MVP, so a minimum viable product, in order to gain actionable metrics and to understand how to move forward. Whether to pivot and to reconsider your ideas, or to persevere, and then start your own business? So I recommend also this reading.
“THE STARTUP OWNER’S MANUAL” BY BOB DORF
This is a very big book, and sometimes can be a bit confusing, especially at the beginning because it’s like a manual and the reader is really taken through all the step which are necessary to start a startup and possibly a successful startup. And the interesting thing that some people find confusing, also my colleagues is the fact that he’s brought together two streams. And one is the one about web and mobile channels. And the other one is about the brick and mortar channels. So the physical channels. However, once you start getting more into the mode of this book and you get more familiar on how the writer the author writes you start finding it very interesting, very inspiring, definitely thought provoking. So it’s definitely useful for anyone that wants to open a startup. However it’s hard to digest because it’s really long.
