The Lean Start-Up

Unboxed: The Rise of the Fleet-Footed Start-Up

To read the New York Times article on the "the lean start up" click "Unboxed:" above

The term “lean start-up” was coined by Mr. Ries, 31, an engineer, entrepreneur and blogger. His inspiration, he says, was the lean manufacturing process, fine-tuned in Japanese factories decades ago and focused on eliminating any work or investment that doesn’t produce value for customers.
“This is lean manufacturing for start-ups,” explains Mr. Blank, 56, a serial entrepreneur.
Since 1978, he has been a founder or early employee in eight start-ups, both winners and losers. To cite a couple, Rocket Science Games, a once-promising video game maker, founded in 1993, cratered amid losses a few years later, while Epiphany, a business software company, founded in 1997, was acquired by a larger corporation for $329 million in 2005 — “one my grandchildren will be grateful for,” Mr. Blank notes.
Today, he advises start-up companies and teaches at Stanford and the University of California, Berkeley.
end quote.

Since I was someone who joined Briarpatch an honest business group that started out of UC Berkeley in the late 60s and early 70s I completely advocate the idea of lean start-ups. The idea of a cottage industry starting in your garage just like Stephen Jobs and Steve Wozniak when the founded Apple and to some degree Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer  who founded Microsoft is still a good one. Starting lean as a business even if it is a part time one where you begin in your garage or a rented room somewhere is a good idea.  Failure is usually necessary to succeed eventually in a business. So not giving up if one venture doesn't go the way you planned is necessary. So if you put too much money into a venture that fails you cannot recover. So it is important to start something very lean so if it fails you can recover but still have learned all the amazing things you did in your failure. This often leads to success in the future of any business. Usually a person starting up needs to be 25 to 30 years old minimum to be successful at any business. However, if you have a successful business mentor that you can trust I suppose a person could start a successful business at almost any age over 12. However, to become successful alone without help usually age 25 to 30 is the minimum one can reasonably expect a likely outcome of success. The reason for this is that one must develop the ability to wear many hats(the ability to be product designer, product maker, salesman, delivery person, secretary, and quality control etc.) Without all these abilities and more the business has no chance at all of succeeding. But once one has enough experience and ability mobilized there is no limit to the success one can achieve in business.