February 8, 2010 – Silicon Valley - with a 37% decrease in VC funding, Silicon Valley entrepreneurs are leveraging new technologies and methodologies to move ahead with new company creation. According to Eric Ries, of startuplessonslearned.com, a confluence of events has created the democratization of entrepreneurship allowing lean startups to flourish. New lean startups grow faster because: 1) The commodity technology stack – free and OpenSource software that allows entrepreneurs to use software with no permissions or proprietary licenses; 2) Customer driven development that helps entrepreneurs discover what customers want before it’s too late; 3) Use of the agile product development methodology in which the product is built iteratively and “progress is creating a line of working code.”
Rather than the traditional functional organization infrastructure, Ries recommends two teams – the Problem Team, which is focused on who the customer is and what problem the product will solve; and the Solution Team, focused on developing the product and testing weather the current hypothesis is still relevant.
The result - avoiding building a product that no one wants and discovering the “pivot” points -- where product direction changes to meet customer needs.
A YouTube video of Ries speaking about Lean Startups is available at the Stanford University Center for Professional Development, “Entrepreneurial Though Leaders Seminar”
http://www.youtube.com/user/StanfordUniversity&rclk=cth#p/u/40/zGXAVw3vF9A
Frances Mann-Craik is Founder and CEO of Addison Marketing - www.addisonmarketing.com
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