10 must-read blogs for any Lean Startup
- Eric Ries
The man behind the Lean Startup movement. Full of insight into the approach, with an archive of articles that formed the basis of his excellent book The Lean Startup. Don’t rely on second hand interpretation of his ideas, view them at source. There’s many misconceptions about the lean startup movement. Read his articles and you’ll realise there’s more to this guy than meets the eye.
- Ash Maurya
Whilst Eric Ries’ scientific approach to developing innovative products is groundbreaking, Ash Maurya has been quietly building up a reputation as the voice on applying lean to real life projects or in his words ‘iterating from Plan A to a Plan That Works’. His book Running Lean is a step-by-step guide for entrepreneurs and innovators to empirically test, refine, and realize their vision from the earliest ideation stages to building a product customers want. He also puts on workshops on applying lean to your ideas, which I’d highly recommend.
- Steve Blank
A serial entrepreneur and Stanford University lecturer, Steve Blank is the ‘godfather’ (sorry Steve) of customer development. His book Four Steps to the Epiphany is heralded as the book on customer development. He’ll be releasing another book The Startup Owners Manual which is sure to be a bigger success to his increased profile. He’ll also be running an online class the Lean Launchpad, due to start this spring/summer. You can sign up for free.
- Brant Cooper
Brant Cooper & Patrick Vlaskovits wrote The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development – a short, actionable summary to the more detailed Four Steps to the Epiphany. Brant runs workshops and writes a great blog at Market By Numbers where he shares best practice on this approach and how to apply it to your project.
- Luxr
Luxr (the Lean User Experience Residency) was founded by Janice and Jason Fraser, formerly of Adaptive Path, an international user experience design consultancy. Lean UX is a term coined by Janice to communicate a new approach to user experience design, focusing on principles developed by Eric Ries in The Lean Startup – mainly less waste, more collaborative working, quicker cycle times and a focus on learning, measuring and iterating. They put on workshops, run 10 week long programmes for startups and regularly speak at events round the world and write a blog.
- Jeff Gothelf
Jeff rose to prominence with last year’s Smashing article Getting Out of the Deliverables Business where he introduced the concept of Lean UX to the masses. As already mentioned the concept had developed out of the agile UX and Lean Startup movements (in particular a series of workshops in late 2010 where a multiple discovery moment was realised). Jeff nows run Proof, a product innovation studio in NYC, along with fellow lean advocates Giff Constable and Josh Seiden.
- Lean Startup Machine
LSM is an intensive workshop for innovators/entrepreneurs to learn how to build products that customers want. Their blog is a great resource for practical stories about using the lean approach. As their weekend workshops are geared towards validating real product ideas there’s a great network of startups with stories to tell, with the highs and lows that this intense approach to customer & product development brings. Follow their journey as they take Lean around the world.
- Rob Fitzpatrick
Tools and guidance for confused founders. Just about sums it up really! Some great insight from Rob Fitzpatrick. In his words… ‘I also do lots of talking about how to start companies without losing either your house or your mind, both at events and here on the blog.’ Go check it out!
- Made by Many
MxM are a lean agency (like us, but bigger). Their blog is an interesting take on applying lean in an agency environment, which isn’t easy (and doesn’t mean cheap!).
- Leancamp
Leancamp is an unconference where everyone comes to learn and share knowledge. Their blog is a fantastic resource of videos and slides for startups or anyone creating innovative products using lean and agile principles.
[We Love Lean is curated by Spook Studio – a lean product innovation studio by the sea.]
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