As you consider building your own minimum viable product, let this simple rule suffice: remove any feature, process, or effort that does not contribute directly to the learning you seek.

Start-up success is not a consequence of good genes or being in the right place at the right time. Success can be engineered by following the right process, which means it can be learned, which means it can be taught.

The goal of every startup experiment is to discover how to build a sustainable business around that vision.

If you cannot fail, you cannot learn.

Most start-up companies fail and it is smart public policy to help entrepreneurs increase their odds of succeeding. But, the biggest loss to our economy is not all the start-ups that didn't make it: It's the ones that might have been created but weren't.

Lean thinking defines value as providing benefit to the customer; anything else is waste.

By the time that product is ready to be distributed widely, it will already have established customers.