Before university, I spent hours meticulously crafting business plans for ideas that excited me: edible insect farms, automated restaurants, and drone delivery networks. These plans were my prized possessions—backed up across multiple storage devices like precious relics of entrepreneurial ambition. Diving into new industries and dissecting the intricacies that made them commercially promising was thrilling. I relished the thought of revolutionising the economy.
But in hindsight, I wasted so much time. Not a single idea materialised, and the world didn’t wait. Amazon now uses drones, and insect farms are commonplace. The landscape shifted while I was still writing, planning, and perfecting. The problem wasn’t that my ideas lacked potential; it was that I clung to plans instead of action.
Learning about the lean startup methodology was a wake-up call. It teaches a bias toward action—a way to escape the trap of endless planning.
Developed by Eric Ries (2011) and drawing from Steve Blank’s insights, the lean startup flips traditional entrepreneurship on its head. Instead of relying on intuition or extensive business plans, it champions rapid experimentation and customer feedback. At its core is the idea that market demand is unpredictable, no matter how well-researched your projections might seem. Value isn’t what you imagine it to be—it’s what the customer decides.
Why Planning Still Matters (Briefly)
Don’t get me wrong; you can’t entirely skip the planning stage. But you only need to ask yourself three fundamental questions:
Can you create value greater than your cost of production?
If you can’t, the business is unsustainable from the start.
Can you avoid ruinous price competition?
If your value is easily replicated, someone else will undercut you, and the business becomes unviable.
Will you enjoy working on this?
Because without passion, the grind will wear you down before the business takes off.
Answer these questions—ideally within a day—and then move. Build. Test. Learn.
The Power of Customer Validation
The most important step isn’t designing a perfect product or crafting a flawless pitch deck. It’s putting your idea out there and engaging with customers. Talk to them. Test assumptions. What do they truly need? What’s their pain point? The answers may surprise you and likely won’t align perfectly with your initial plans.
Once you have a clearer idea, build a scrappy minimum viable product (MVP)—the simplest version of your product or service that delivers enough value to test with real users. The MVP isn’t about impressing people; it’s about learning.
Start building – today
Looking back, I realise I loved the planning stage because it was safe. It gave me the illusion of progress without risk. The lean startup demands that you embrace uncertainty, take risks, and learn from failures. It’s uncomfortable—but it’s also the only way to truly build something impactful.
So, stop writing and start doing. Revolution doesn’t wait for perfection.
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