A Few Things I Learned from Lean Startup Machine

I attended the Lean Startup Machine for the second time last weekend as a part of a long 5-day stretch of conferences and workshops. Again, what an amazing experience! Although we didn’t win, we walked away in 2nd place (way to go, team DrinkSync/CoverMyShift!).

Here are a few lessons learned from the event:

• People are usually very willing to help, and to my surprise often excited to do so. I was offered free coffee more than once after interviewing coffee shop employees :). Face-to-face engagement and a non-threatening introduction is the key.
• Make sure you’re talking to the right people. A particular user group may invalidate your assumptions but you might be talking to the wrong people. Identify outliers (edge cases can lead you to the right users or solution) or commonalities between users that do validate your assumptions.
• It’s better to take action with uncertainty than to conduct further research or experiments. Startups live in a word of unpredictability. Sometimes you have to just go with your gut, using the limited data available. Speed matters.

Shout out to LSM, the mentors (Lane Halley, in particular), and volunteers for putting on an awesome event. Looking forward to the next one!