Prologue ix
1 Persistence of Vision: Inspire team members, customers, and investors with a Product Vision: a mental image of your desired future 1
2 Stories of Your Life and Others: Discover the Business Lifecycle of startups and scaleups and reflect on exploration, execution, and Product/Market Fit 7
3 Picking Up the Pieces: Make a Business Quilt by remixing the Lean Canvas and Business Model Canvas and adding a dimension of time 21
4 The Persona Protocol: Better understand your target customers and their Jobs to Be Done by creating Lean Personas 35
5 Fortune’s Wheel: Figure out your Unique Value Proposition by investigating the customer’s Pains and Gains and making a Value Proposition Wheel 41
6 The Crowded Shadows: Learn about the benefits of Equity Crowdfunding and choose between the use of a crowdfunding platform or doing it all yourself 49
7 The Lunatic Cafe: Meet every day with your team for a Daily Cafe and Work Out Loud by sending each other Daily Updates 55
8 Streams of Silver: Visualize your work with Kanban Boards and optimize the workflow with Work in Progress Limits 61
9 The Invention of Everything Else: Discover the Innovation Vortex, which emerged by combining the Design Thinking approach with the Lean Startup method 67
10 The Terminal Experiment: Validate hypotheses with Lean Experiments so that you can Pivot, Patch, or Persevere on your way to Business/Market Fit 77
11 Fables and Reflections: Get together with your team for an Agile Retrospective to do some reflection and work on your Improvement Backlog 87
12 Kings of the North: Navigate your business in the right direction using a North Star Metric, with the help of Support Metrics and Check Metrics 95
13 The Entropy Tango: Keep a Product Backlog with Minimum Viable Features and Experiment Stories updated through ongoing Backlog Maintenance 103
14 A Pleasure to Burn: Keep an eye on your progress with Burn-down Charts, Burn-up Charts, or Cumulative Flow Diagrams 113
15 The New Recruit: Get your hiring process in order with a Recruitment Funnel, sourcing by the founders, and some Skills Tests and Work Samples 119
16 The Enigma Score: Start workforce planning and talent management in your business with Hiring Scorecards that help you avoid culture misfits 129
17 Standard Hero Behavior: Learn a good approach to Job Interviews using a combination of Behavioral Questions and Behavioral Tests 135
18 The Darkest Road: Manage the expectations of stakeholders with a Product Roadmap, created with experiments, outcomes, and a Rolling-Wave Planning 141
19 Ghost Writer in the Sky: Set yourself up for content marketing and e-mail marketing with a Content Calendar and a Content Backlog 149
20 Million-Dollar Gamble: Aim for Agile Funding of your business with small batches, small budgets, and keeping multiple options open 155
21 Spheres of Influence: Get insights into the creation of a Pitch Deck and learn about the essential and the optional slides 167
22 Heart Journey: Describe the optimal customer journey and user experience with a Journey Map and discover the Moments of Truth 177
23 A Pirate’s Tale: Find your way on the path to success, from awareness to revenue, measured with the Pirate Metrics 185
24 Test of the Twins: Learn about Growth Hacking and Conversion Rate Optimization with Split Tests, Multivariate Tests, and Cohort Analysis 193
25 Culture Clash: Identify Core Values, create a Culture Code, and use stories and rewards to prepare your business for scaling 201
Epilogue 209
Acknowledgments 213
About the Author 215
Index 217
