Por: Rodrigo Aquino     2632 visualizações     Tempo leitura: 5 min

To start a business and have success are two distinct actions and, depending on your decisions very different from one another. When you create your own business you need to know some rules that will help you to short the way to success. Using as a base the book Lean Startup by Eric Ries, I prepared four important considerations¹ which initially may help you to get there!

There are other very important topics that can be studied more deeply in the Book of Ries, however, the objective of this article is to introduce some concepts for those who want summarized information from which attitudes can be taken in the short term in order to stimulate the fast growing of a company.

Let's see the considerations:

1. Set the indicators of success before starting to build something
   Before elaborating your MVP (Minimal Viable Product: it is a sample of your product containing the basic features, but complete, in order to analyze customer behavior It can be in various forms such as a video, a Web page, a prototype. etc.) You need to define exactly what you want to measure, for example, number of clicks, registrations, market sales values, etc.
   
   It is worth remembering that these indicators can change during the adaptation of your product. Try to understand how these numbers effect your actions in MVP, in other words, analyze what was good and bad, learn and check what is worth adjusting or discarding in the product. A very important tip is to analyze the customer behavior and not just specifically in relation to your business, thus, you could identify a market niche not yet explored by other companies, trying a new way that can lead you to success.
   
   
2. Be prepared to totally change the branch of your business if necessary
   It is very difficult to predict the behavior of public after the release of a product (independent of business sector). Sometimes the indicators shows that people want something totally different of what you have to offer and at that moment it is time to make a very difficult decision: continuing on the same business sector trying other ways (with other products) or move to an unknown area. This is usually one of the hardest decisions to make, especially when you already have a structured organization (prepared to work with a certain product).
   
   Eric presents several cases in his book and one of the examples would be about the Groupon site, which should be a site where people could express their opinions about various types of products, a kind of collective activism. Andrew Mason, founder of the site, did not necessarily reach the point of changing the branch of business, however, he had to completely change the direction of the company to achieve success. He transformed his business into a site of collective purchases and revolutionized the consumption in the US and needless to say, in the world.
   
   
3. Besides the customers, listen to the ideas of your employees
   Organize informal meetings with employees and try to understand from them what is missing and what needs to be improved in the company. Never ask them to write on a paper or send an e-mail about it, go to them and listen to them carefully and from the lean point of view, try to ask the right questions. Some employees may have direct contact with customers and often they have valuable information to reduce waste and increase the level of customer satisfaction. Customer satisfaction with your product is the first step for them to recommend it to the others.
   
   The employees engaged in the growth of the company, most of the time, have ideas how to improve a process, a part of a system, etc. If you see potential in these people, they can help you not only at certain times, but also during the whole conception and improvement of an MVP.
   
   
4. Optimize your work using the concept of "One Piece Flow"
   Execute any work in your company following an "One Piece Flow" approach, it means: complete all the steps without interruption until you make sure that it added value to the customer. Eliminate inventory (physical and information) between the processes, moving, waiting, etc. This way of working will bring great benefits because it will show you what can be improved during the process, reducing the time to conclude the tasks and the cost to your company. To understand better, watch the video below and compare the example presented with the workflow or value stream within your company, I'm sure you will be surprised and will change something for the better.
   
   

Thousands of startups appear monthly around the world and, particularly in Brazil, 25% of them are deactivated before completing one year according to the study by FDC (http://www.fdc.org.br/blogespacodialogo/Lists/Postagens/Post.aspx?ID=384). These numbers represent a large market niche very well explored by Eric Ries in his book The Lean Startup. To avoid being the owner of one of these companies that have these terrible statistics, I suggest you read the book of Ries and try to understand well the concepts that the author wants to pass. This will help you reach your goals, and perhaps in the future we will have another great company of global references.
Note:
¹ Some of these considerations are not clearly described in the book of Eric Ries and were adapted to some concepts of lean thinking.

Bibliography

Data da publicação: 04/22/2015

Gostou do artigo? Para receber nossos informativos click here.