What Is Lean Startup?

Lean Startup is a product development methodology introduced by Eric Ries that applies principles from lean manufacturing to the creation of new businesses and products. Its core premise is that startups do not fail because of bad execution, they fail because they build something nobody wants. The solution is to validate assumptions as quickly and cheaply as possible before committing to a full build.

The methodology is built around a loop: Build, Measure, Learn. Instead of spending months building a complete product based on assumptions, you build the smallest possible thing to test your most important assumption, measure how real users respond, learn from the data, and use that learning to inform what you build next.

The MVP is the central tool of the Lean Startup methodology. It is the 'Build' step of the loop, the minimal product needed to generate the learning you are after. Lean Startup reframes what success looks like in the early stages: not 'did we ship what we planned' but 'did we learn what we needed to learn'.

Lean Startup thinking has fundamentally changed how software products are built. Before it, the dominant model was 'waterfall', plan everything upfront, build it all, then launch. Lean Startup replaced that with a mindset of continuous iteration and learning, which is far better suited to the uncertainty of building new products in new markets.