My own list of resources for people applying the Lean Startup Methology.

Aphorisms

Print them on posters.

• Life’s too short to build something nobody wants – Eric Ries
• Remove any feature, process or effort that does not contribute directly to the learning you seek – Eric Ries
• Innovation accounting: Baseline with an MVP; Tune; Pivot or Persevere – Eric Ries
• A good design is one that changes customer behaviour for the better – Eric Ries
• Real learning comes from facts and commitment, not opinions and promises – Eric Ries
• 3 A’s of metrics: actionable, accessible, auditable – Eric Ries
• If you launch it and see what happens, you’ll succeed – at seeing what happens – Eric Ries
• Launch when you can deliver a quantum of value – Eric Ries
• Given the right context, customers can clearly articulate their problems, but it’s your job to come up with the solution – Ash Maurya
• It’s not the customer’s job to know what they want – Steve Jobs
• Get out of the building – Steve Blank
• Startups that succeed are those that manage to iterate enough times before running out of resources – Eric Ries
• Practice trumps theory – Ash Maurya
• Customers don’t care about your solution, they care about their problems – Dave McClure
• While ideas are cheap, acting on them is quite expensive – Ash Maurya
• Bind a solution to your problem as late as possible – Ash Maurya

Types Of MVP

In ascending order of complexity.

• Observation
• Re-enactment
• Interview
• Pitch a fake product (email, call, face-to-face)
• Video like Dropbox
• Mail campaign/PPC/landing page with AB/multivariate testing
• Concierge - talk to the customer, simulate the service
• Wizard of Oz - perform back-office tasks manually
• Partly-implemented application, e.g. application form that declines everyone

Books

Essentials

Don’t skip these!

• The Lean Startup – Eric Ries
• Running Lean – Ash Maurya
• The Entrepreneur’s Guide To Customer Development – Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits

Very, Very Useful

• Business Model Generation – Alex Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur
• 4 Steps To The Epiphany – Steve Blank
• Don’t Just Roll The Dice – Neil Davidson
• Positioning: The Battle For Your Mind – Al Ries, Jack Trout

Tools

• Business Modelling: Lean Canvas, Validation Board
• Source Control: GitHub
• Hosting: Heroku, S3, GitHub
• CI: Circle CI, Cloud Bees Hosted Jenkins
• Analytics: KISSmetrics, Mixpanel, Google Analytics, StatsMix
• Split Testing: KISSmetrics, Google Website Optimizer, Visual Website Optimizer
• CRM: Intercom, Salesforce
• Email Marketing: MailChimp
• Surveys: SurveyGizmo, AskYourTargetMarket, SurveyMonkey
• Offers: Hackers And Founders Rewardli

Update: StackShare is an amazing resource for finding tools.

Resources

Lean Startup Methodology

The Lean Startup Circle Wiki

Metrics

Understanding Opportunities/Ideation

• Lean Canvas Poster PDF
• Marketing Malpractice: The Cause and the Cure Summary of a lot of Clayton Christensen’s ideas on product management, e.g. I hire product _________ to do the job of __________.

Customer Development

• Customer Development FAQ by Cindy Alvarez at Yammer
• How To Get Out Of The Building by Trevor Owens at Lean Startup Machine
• How To Screw Up Customer Development by Rob Fitzpatrick (lean startup expert)
• 12 Tips for Customer Development Interviews
• Essential Customer Development skills – Softball, Anchor and Deflection questions