LEANSTACK · Starting Up

📖 Book

Paid Intermediate

Why we picked it The most systematic step-by-step process for de-risking an idea, built around the Lean Canvas. Where The Lean Startup gives philosophy, Running Lean gives you the exact sequence of experiments to run this month.

Running Lean

From LEANSTACK by Ash Maurya ~240 pages

Capture your business model on one Lean Canvas before building.
Rank and attack your riskiest assumptions first.
Run problem interviews, then solution interviews, then an MVP.

Open leanstack.com →

Answers What does 'validating an idea' actually mean? How do I know if my idea is any good? How do I validate an idea without building anything? How do I run customer discovery as an Indian founder building for Indian users? How much should an MVP realistically cost to build in India?

📋 Template

✓ Link checked Free Beginner

Why we picked it The actual one-page canvas, free to print or copy into a doc, so you can fill it in within the hour instead of reading a whole book first. Use it before your first round of customer conversations to write down what you think is true, then use it again after to see what actually changed.

Lean Canvas template

From LEANSTACK by Ash Maurya

Fill in customer segment and problem before solution, in that order.
Leave boxes blank rather than guessing, a blank box tells you what to go find out.
Keep one canvas per customer segment if you are testing more than one type of user.

Open leanstack.s3.amazonaws.com →

Answers How do I run customer discovery as an Indian founder building for Indian users?

📋 Template

Free Intermediate

Why we picked it A free one page canvas built specifically to map what someone was doing before your product, their old solution or workaround, what pushed them to look for something new, and what they actually did about it. Fill it in after every discovery conversation and the pattern of push, pull, and existing workaround becomes visible across many interviews at once. It is the most direct tool here for turning what have they already tried into something you track systematically.

The Customer Forces Canvas (Updated)

From LeanStack by Ash Maurya

Map the old solution or workaround your prospect was using before they considered you.
Distinguish the push, the problem, from the pull, your proposed fix, in every interview.
Fill one out per interview and patterns across prospects become visible fast.

Open blog.leanstack.com →

Answers How do I tell the difference between a nice-to-have problem and one people will actually change their behavior to fix?