The Promise of the 'Lean Startup'

Today's high-tech entrepreneurs have at their command more than just the ability to invent new technologies. They have mastered the discipline and methodology required to harness those technologies in order to serve customers. Such a combination of new technology and new understanding is unlocking new opportunities. In order to maximize them, this generation of entrepreneurs combines extremely low costs with faster cycle times to produce what I call "lean startups."

Total startup costs are plummeting: It costs less than $10,000 to launch a new, web-based product. Using the latest technology, a lean startup can create product prototypes in weeks and months instead of years, using customer feedback to evolve them in near-real time. Releases are measured in minutes and hours, not days and weeks. In some cases, lean startups are releasing new code to production 50 times a day.