10 Reasons To Steer Away From A Lean Startup Setup

The Feb 2011 meetup of the Lean Startup Circle in Boston featured both authors of "The Entrepreneurs Guide to Customer Development," Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits, who took an unconventional approach on the topic. As someone who has seen the "What is the Lean Startup" presentation by a number of folks, I appreciated the way they approached their presentation. Brant and Patrick discussed the top ten reasons why a person wouldn’t want to use the Lean Startup approach in their company. 

If those unaware of the basics of lean startup methodology, this presentation proved to be a little challenging because the duo assumed a base level understanding of the concept. In a nutshell, the lean methodology or lean startup principles focus on a feedback-based system of developing products and solutions. The method advocates creating a minimum viable product (MVP), and assessing its usefulness and potential in the market, collecting user feedback, and introducing upgrades accordingly.  Although many find it very useful, the principles might not be suitable for all kinds of startups, which was the theory the duo proceeded to explore in the presentation. 

The drawback to this approach to the presentation was that it clearly left a few people in the dark. It was more of a 2nd level Customer Development course. With that said, those guys did a tremendous job in the question/answer period that followed the presentation to both set the context for the folks who are new to the methodology, but also provide tactical advice to those who already understood the concepts, and were looking for ways to get started. Presentation below, enjoy!

Top 10 Considerations To Not Use Lean Principles 

The presentation focused on the following 10 reasons that make lean methodologies unsuitable for many:

1. The concept of uncertainty: As explained in the presentation, lean startup principles are built on an inherent foundation of uncertainty. Experimenting and pivoting are essential elements of the principles, which, for any company that is risk averse, is a challenge. So, companies that seek surety, and predictable outcomes, will not thrive on this framework.
2. Demands Flexibility: To thrive in accordance with the lean principles, having a flexible and adaptive environment, which most conventional management structures lack. Those that thrive on success, rather than viewing failure as a stepping stone to success, can struggle with this setup of lean principles.
3. Longer Time-To-Market: With developing an MVP and making iterative changes with every upgrade and feature introduction, the cycle of development becomes very long. Businesses can thus take longer time to launch a full product in the market, and struggle with keeping up with the ongoing changes in the sector.
4. Resource Limitations: The idea that lean startup saves costs may not be completely correct. The need for consistent and repeated modifications can quickly become very expensive in terms of resources spent and personnel hours expended.
5. Regulatory challenges: In industries where regulatory norms keep evolving, the continuous development, modification, and experimentation cycle of lean are not the most suitable.
6. Too Much Focus on Early Adopters: The lean philosophy focuses immensely on early adopters for feedback. Though valuable, this can easily lead to the creation of products and solutions which do not resolve the bigger market issues, but only address a niche challenge.
7. Demand For Agility: Lean systems demand agile team practices, which not every team is well adjusted to. Only teams that can adopt agile methodology may be able to adapt to lean. \
8. Unsuitable for Legacy Systems: Lean methodologies are unsuitable for legacy ventures, which can find the consistent agility and legacy technology incompatible with the lean practices.
9. Targeted Focus: Lean demands consistent revisions, which leads to losing sight of the bigger picture. It often leads companies astray from the original idea completely.
10. Short-Term Vision: Instead of keep a product useful and scalable in the long term, continuous modifications provide short-term success, leaving products from realizing full potential.

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