The Lean Startup: a Disciplined Approach to Imagining, Designing, and Building New Products

This workshop focuses on how to build a startup from the ground up to focus on customers, markets, and speed of iteration. Using examples drawn from his own experiences in the startup hub of Silicon Valley, Eric Ries unravels the myths and misconceptions that guide most startups, and paints a picture of a new way forward for the industry.

Through case studies, exercises, and discussions, Eric Ries will guide entrepreneurs of all stripes through the key areas that determine success for startups: product, engineering, QA, marketing, and business strategy. This workshop presents a new methodology that will allow you to bring new products – and companies – to life.

At the end of the workshop, you will have new insight into how to evaluate the strengths and shortcomings of your company, as well as a clear plan of action to bring lean-startup thinking back home. Rather than abstract principles, you’ll learn to directly problem-solve.

What will I learn?

• How to scorecard the health of your startup.
• How to radically improve cycle time – from ideas to implementation to assessment – and focus on the cycle times that matter.
• How to build actionable metrics (and how to ignore vanity metrics).
• Techniques to mitigate the biggest risk for startups: that no customers will buy its products.
• How to identify what customers want to buy before building or making follow-on investments in new features.
• Ship products as fast as multiple times a day while improving quality and lowering costs.
• Build a company-wide culture of decision-making based on real facts, not opinions.
• How to avoid “core incompetencies” that derail most new product initiatives.
• How to find and retain profitable customers.

Who should attend?

Although the workshop examines technical topics like continuous deployment and split-testing, it’s designed to be comprehensible to hackers and MBAs alike. Students benefit from the content itself as well as interactions with like-minded entrepreneurs.