Successful Startup 101: September 2014 Successful Startup 101: September 2014 | Page 9

“Where’s the beef?” is a question that’s still worth
asking today, specifically at those many startups that
have jumped aboard the latest and greatest craze-”lean” everything. That’s because, when it comes to
“lean,” the same question applies: Where, exactly, is
the beef?
Is There “V” in Your “MVP”?
I find myself thinking fondly of Clara’s
pronouncement whenever I have to sit through
another bogus business review session where
someone with the bare bones of an idea is trying
to convince a group of otherwise intelligent
investors that there’s a real business opportunity
buried beneath all the B.S., and that (a) all the
shortcomings of the story being spun and (b) all the
gaps in the gospel aren’t actually problems at all.
They’re not bugs, oversights, or misses; they’re the
intentional result of trying to be “lean” and trying to
launch “something” (not to say, “anything”) to g et
the ball rolling.
I’m not sure when it got to be OK to try to do the least
work possible in developing  something that you are
seriously trying to do well, but maybe I missed a memo
or two. But when people tell me that it’s the minimum
viable product (MVP), not the meat of the matter, that
actually counts I remember that Clara knew better. This
entire lean startup movement not only misleads and
misdirects people into building mediocre products and
potential services, it’s also much more of a curse than
a cure.
We’re encouraging an entire generation of young
entrepreneurs to rush things out to prospective
customers--to throw a bunch of stuff against the

wall and see what sticks. In the old days, people
thought this was a good way to test to see if the
spaghetti was al dente, but it actually wasn’t. Pasta
that sticks to the wall is most likely overcooked and
too gummy to taste good.
Like so many other things in life, there’s no simple
shortcut or quick way to do these things right.  It
takes time and craft and patience to build things
that will matter and last. “Quick and dirty and out
the door” sucks as a strategy for successful startups.
Maybe you can never be too thin or too rich, but a
startup can clearly be too lean. The ultimate goal isn’t
to build skinny start-ups, it’s to build smart ones.
I understand that it would be naïve to delay your
launch until you thought you had every single detail
exactly right. We know that even the experts can
completely overlook glaring interface flaws or other
obvious omissions that the simplest novice user will
see right off the bat. And it’s equally arrogant to
assume that you can’t learn a single thing from the
marketplace or your users. But that’s a different issue. 
As I see it, there’s a basic flaw in the common
understanding of the “lean startup” concept, and
then there are three main problems with the way
most young entrepreneurs are trying to adopt and
implement it.

The Basic Flaw
Even the best MVP won’t succeed without an MVA.
An MVA is a Minimum Viable Audience (that’s my
simple shorthand for a bunch of potential buyers).
Long before you start creating your product, crafting
your code, and designing your UI you need to find