Intuit Lean Startup Quiz: Test Your Knowledge

Study Notes

Overview:

Lean startup is a methodology that aims to shorten product development cycles and rapidly discover if a proposed business model is viable.
Customer feedback is emphasized over intuition and flexibility over planning.
Lean startup reduces market risks and sidesteps the need for large amounts of initial project funding and expensive product launches.
The methodology is based on the customer development methodology of Silicon Valley serial entrepreneur-turned-academic Steve Blank.
The lean startup methodology asserts that "lean" has nothing to do with how much money a company raises.
Lean manufacturing and customer development are precursors to lean startup.

Principles:

Minimum viable product (MVP) is the "version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort".
Continuous deployment is a process whereby all code that is written for an application is immediately deployed into production.
Split or A/B testing is an experiment in which different versions of a product are offered to customers at the same time.
Actionable metrics can lead to informed business decisions and subsequent action.
A pivot is a structured course correction designed to test a new fundamental hypothesis about the product, strategy, and engine of growth.
Innovation accounting focuses on how entrepreneurs can maintain accountability and maximize outcomes by measuring progress, planning milestones, and prioritizing.
The Build–Measure–Learn loop emphasizes speed as a critical ingredient to customer development.
The Business Model Canvas is a strategic management template invented by Alexander Osterwalder around 2008 for developing new business models or documenting existing ones.

The movement:

Prominent high-tech companies have begun to publicly employ the lean startup methodology, including Intuit, Dropbox, Wealthfront, Votizen, Aardvark, and Grockit.
The lean startup principles are also taught in classes at Harvard Business School and UC Berkeley.
Academic researchers in Finland have applied the lean startup methodology to accelerating research innovation.
The United States Government has employed lean startup ideas.
Hacking for Defense is a program in which university students solve problems that the Department of Defense, the United States Armed Forces, and the United States Intelligence Community submit to participating universities.
Lean startup principles have been applied to specific competencies within typical startups and larger organizations.The Lean Startup Methodology:
Developed by Eric Ries in 2008 to apply lean management and customer development principles to startups.
Expanded to apply to any individual, team or company looking to develop new products, services or systems without unlimited resources.
Ries' first company, Catalyst Recruiting, failed due to lack of understanding of customers' wants and focusing too much on the initial product launch.
Ries' second company, There, Inc., failed due to the company's "vision was almost too concrete" and the inability to see that their product did not represent consumer demand.
Ries concluded that the failures shared a similar origin of working forward from technology instead of backward from business results.
Ries later co-founded IMVU Inc. and integrated Blank's customer development methodology with lean software development to form the lean startup methodology.
Ben Horowitz criticized the lean startup method in 2010 for overemphasizing "running lean" as an end rather than a means to winning the market without running out of cash.
Horowitz gave an example of his startup, Loudcloud, which by "running fat" was able to outperform 20 direct competitors.
Advocates of lean methods point out that "running lean" does not mean cost-cutting.
Trey Griffith stated in 2012 that the majority of backing for the lean startup methodology was anecdotal and had not been rigorously validated when first presented.
However, the method was better supported by a 2011 analysis of the factors of success in growth companies.
The lean startup methodology gained its reputation due to the success of Ries' bestselling book, The Lean Startup, published in September 2011.

Description

Test your knowledge of the lean startup methodology with our quiz! From the principles of minimum viable products and continuous deployment to the Business Model Canvas and innovation accounting, this quiz covers it all. Discover how prominent high-tech companies are using lean startup principles and how they've been applied to specific competencies within startups and larger organizations. Whether you're a startup founder or simply interested in entrepreneurship, this quiz is a great way to learn more about the lean startup methodology.