Is Your Big Idea Worth Pursuing?

You’ve probably “gotten outside the building” and talked to customers. You’ve identified problems that need solving, and maybe even built a Minimum Viable Product. But how do you tell whether your idea represents a viable business? Do you really have to go through the whole cycle of development, failure, iteration, tweak, repeat?

What if you could test your business model earlier in the process—before you’ve expended valuable time and resources?

Scaling Lean offers an invaluable blueprint for modeling startup success. You’ll learn the essential metrics that measure the output of a working business model, give you the pulse of your company, communicate its health to investors, and enable you to make precise interventions when things go wrong.

What You'll Learn

• How to measure progress with a single metric that works across all business models so you don't have to spin different progress stories for different audiences (page 21).
• How to test the viability of any business model using a handful of key metrics instead of spending countless hours plugging numbers into a spreadsheet (page 49).
• How to achieve traction using a staged 10X rollout strategy like the one employed by Facebook and Tesla Motors (page 74). How to deconstruct traction into a handful of key levers so you know what to measure and not drown in non-actionable data (page 107).
• How to systematically identify what's riskiest in your business model at every stage of the business so you know what to optimize and what to ignore (page 144).
• How to source, rank, and quickly test good ideas using LEAN Sprints so you only double-down on the most promising ideas and throw out the rest (page 165).
• How to turn failure into a competitive advantage. (page 216). How to effectively communicate progress with your internal and external stakeholders (page 230).