The only person who can put you out of business, in the early days, is yourself.

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

Using the Lean Startup approach, companies can create order not chaos by providing tools to test a vision continuously.

Nowadays people talk about PayPal's founders as prescient geniuses who would inevitably change the world. It was, however, not so obvious that PayPal would taste its first major success by helping people sell Beanie Babies on eBay. But they had a vision, a hope, and the perseverance to try multiple iterations until they got it right.

If the plan is to see what happens, a team is guaranteed to succeed - at seeing what happens - but won't necessarily gain validated learning - If you cannot fail, you cannot learn.

A head start is rarely large enough to matter, and time spent in stealth mode-away from customers-is unlikely to provide a head start. The only way to win is to learn faster than anyone else.

If you cannot fail, you cannot learn.