Quotes About Business

Toyota discovered that small batches made their factories more efficient. In contrast, in the Lean Startup the goal is not to produce more stuff efficiently. It is to-as quickly as possible-learn how to build a sustainable business.

In my Toyota interviews, when I asked what distinguishes the Toyota Way from other management approaches, the most common first response was genchi gembutsu—whether I was in manufacturing, product development, sales, distribution, or public affairs. You cannot be sure you really understand any part of any business problem unless you go and see for yourself firsthand. It is unacceptable to take anything for granted or to rely on the reports of others.

Cycle after cycle, the team is working hard, but the business is not seeing results. Managers trained in a traditional model draw the logical conclusion: our team is not working hard, not working effectively, or not working efficiently.

Just as scientific experimentation is informed by theory, startup experimentation is guided by the startup's vision. The goal of every startup experiment is to discover how to build a sustainable business around that vision.

we were much more likely to run experiments on our customers than we were to cater to their whims.

The two most important assumptions entrepreneurs make are what I call the value hypothesis and the growth hypothesis.

Should this product be built?" and "Can we build a sustainable business around this set of products and services?" To answer those questions, we need a method for systematically breaking down a business plan into its component parts and testing each part empirically.

pivot is a special kind of change designed to test a new fundamental hypothesis about the product, business model, and engine of growth.

Si yo eligiera un empleado al azar de cualquier nivel, departamento o región, y ese empleado tuviera una idea absolutamente brillante que abriera una fuente de crecimiento radicalmente nueva, ¿qué tendría que hacer para llevar su idea a la práctica? ¿Dispone la empresa de las herramientas de gestión necesarias para ampliar esa idea a fin de que genere el máximo impacto, aun cuando no se ajuste a ninguna de las líneas de negocio actuales?

too many startup business plans look more like they are planning to launch a rocket ship than drive a car. They prescribe the steps to take and the results to expect in excruciating detail, and as in planning to launch a rocket, they are set up in such a way that even tiny errors in assumptions can lead to catastrophic outcomes.

Some people are natural inventors who prefer to work without the pressure and expectations of the later business phases. Others are ambitious and see innovation as a path toward senior management. Still others are particularly skilled at the management of running an established business, outsourcing, and bolstering efficiencies and wringing out cost reductions. People should be allowed to find the kinds of jobs that suit them best.

Startups also have a true north, a destination in mind: creating a thriving and world-changing business. I call that a startup's vision. To achieve that vision, startups employ a strategy, which includes a business model, a product road map, a point of view about partners and competitors, and ideas about who the customer will be. The product is the end result of this strategy

I call the traditional numbers used to judge startups "vanity metrics," and innovation accounting requires us to avoid the temptation to use them.

companies using the sticky engine of growth track their attrition rate or churn rate very carefully. The churn rate is defined as the fraction of customers in any period who fail to remain engaged with the company's product.

A pivot is a special kind of change designed to test a new fundamental hypothesis about the product, business model, and engine of growth.

This led to some frustrating board meetings at which we could show great product "progress" but not much in the way of business results.

exist to learn how to build a sustainable business. This learning can be validated scientifically by running frequent experiments that allow entrepreneurs to test each element of their vision.

Grockit offers

Our goal in building products is to be able to run experiments that will help us learn how to build a sustainable business.

dot-com flameouts that erroneously believed that they could lose money on each customer but, as the old joke goes, make it up in volume.

What if it turns out that the customer doesn't want the product we're building? Although this is never good news for an entrepreneur, finding out sooner is much better than finding out later. Working

Every business plan begins with a set of assumptions. It lays out a strategy that takes those assumptions as a given and proceeds to show how to achieve the company's vision. Because the assumptions haven't been proved to be true (they are assumptions, after all) and in fact are often erroneous, the goal of a startup's early efforts should be to test them as quickly as possible.

All this time, David was learning and gaining feedback from his potential customers, but he was in an unsustainable situation. You can't pay staff with what you've learned,

They exist to learn how to build a sustainable business. This learning can be validated scientifically by running frequent experiments that allow entrepreneurs to test each element of their vision.