Philosophy Helps Start-Ups Move Faster (WSJ on the Lean Startup)

The Wall Street Journal covers the Lean Startup movement in today's paper. Although the article is a bit me-centric, I think they did a good job capturing the fact that this is more than just the bloggers and writers, but represents a shift in thinking among entrepreneurs all over the world. The article includes comments from Kevin Dewalt and Drew Houston. Even Marc Andreessen weighs in. I think this means we've officially diffused our first major misunderstanding (that lean means cheap and small) - congratulations. Apparently, the article is in today's print edition (in the Bay Area section), but I'm in the wrong time zone to see it.


Here's an excerpt:

Philosophy Helps Start-Ups Move Faster - WSJ.com

Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and venture capitalists often churn out how-to business books and fancy themselves as management gurus, but few see their methodologies adopted. Eric Ries is experiencing something different.

...

"Eric is espousing a different way to build companies," says Kevin Dewalt, 40, an entrepreneur in Arlington, Va., who has organized three Lean Startup meetings for Beltway entrepreneurs since October 2009. All the events sold out, says Mr. Dewalt, adding, "We've realized entrepreneurship is a unique management science.'

Mr. Ries's Lean Startup philosophy aims to help new companies make speedier decisions by taking a more disciplined approach to testing products and ideas and using the resulting customer feedback.