Book Review - The Lean Startup

The Lean Startup by Eric Ries provides a lackluster thesis that does not stand the test of time. The book should no longer be considered required reading for founders in 2025.

Most of the book can be summarized in about one sentence: be intentional about how you start a company, and then pivot quickly. This thesis perhaps is in contrast to what was practiced in the dot com era, hence the book's popularity. However, I'm here to dissuade readers in 2025, and think you're better off with a ChatGPT summary. I have read very few books I have felt this strongly about (in the negative direction), to the point where I feel the need to write about it.

I think the one reader who could benefit from this book is a total outsider to the tech-sphere, perhaps someone working a corporate job and searching for inspiration to innovate in their job. This is not the book for a startup founder in 2025, a small business owner, etc. It's for people who have been totally stuck in an innovation-vacuum and need some pulling out of. However, there are better books for that purpose, such as The $100 Startup, Zero to One, etc.

Audible actually recommended this book to me after I listened to Zero to One. Zero to One at least presented a somewhat novel thesis from a very credible source. The Lean Startup is vague, and reads like an HBS case study.

The author repeatedly references his company, which I have never heard of.

But wait, Rishab, an author doesn't need to be well known to have a great idea!

Absolutely.

But, Peter Thiel explains what PayPal did in his book, despite it being a household names. Ries explains his startup as a vague avatar technology that becomes less and less clear as I read more. A quick Google Search shows the company rebranded itself in 2021, and is now a Web3 and Crypto company.

This lack of clarity is perhaps a suggestion from the author to focus less on the specific anecdote, and more on the message, which is also explained in the context of Facebook and car manufacturing.

So, what is that message?

Well, it's to test continuously and pivot. Something that most Silicon Valley, Stanford-dropout types can't get enough of in 2025. The message is so deeply embedded in Silicon Valley startups these days that the book says nothing new. In fact, they're continuously pivoting to the point where there is no focus, or intention. These folks could actually learn a thing or two from small business owners who are hundred-fold more profitable and perform less fraud on average.

This point about intention gets lost within the first few chapters. Ries actually has an excellent opportunity to convince the reader that deep intention is important to develop a product that users actually want (given his anecdote of customers roasting his team even after they try to "educate" them on how to use it).

However, that's unfortunately not what the book is about. I hope someone writes a book on being intentional with your startup, though, and it becomes required reading over on the west coast.

Ries' own company burnt tens of millions in VC funding to iterate hundreds of times to improve their funnel. But that's not great words of wisdom to the average founder who this book is targeted at.

Most people want to build a profitable small business. Literally. Most companies are not venture backed. They're LLCs not founded in SF or Delaware. Not everyone is diluting themselves to 1% and pulling the plug when you still don't have a good business model. The Lean Startup's advice is also not applicable to every line of business. For a social network product, consumer SaaS-y type build - sure. For a biotech, hardware, data, or even most B2Bs, I'd say this is less true.

Yet there are no warnings for either of these two points. Points that should dictate whether or not you open the book. Ries implies his advice is for all. Literally.

"Move fast break things" is a terrible motto.

A quick ChatGPT query about "unicorns made by Harvard (or MIT) undergrad alums since 2020" vs. "unicorns made by Stanford undergrad alums since 2020" will convey why today's culture (not shared by all, but some on the West) is actually slowing innovation.

But that's a story for another day.

My final critique is how the book's methodology actively encourages the pursuit of "vanity metrics," confusing growth with value. The "build-measure-learn" loop, in practice, often devolves into a hunt for any metric that can be optimized, regardless of its connection to a sustainable business model or real customer satisfaction.

Founders today are always posting about their DAUs and MRRs, even when they are not building viral social media apps or subscription-based tools. How do you have MRR without a monthly payment? What happened to EBITDA?

This is because you raise based on your MRR multiples these days rather than your EBITDA multiples. This is the high-risk, high-reward VC growth thesis, but kills the hundreds of otherwise good technologies and businesses that could've been bootstrapped and continued to create value.

This is a symptom of the larger technological stagnation Thiel warns about. Without a better set of business or scientific principles (that you perhaps learn by doing research, an MBA, or taking a class e.g.), startups today will continue to be inadequate for the work of creating breakthroughs in energy, transportation, and medicine. Or even AI! Glorified MRR grinding wrappers are not really building AI – they are SaaS companies.

This book, and the culture behind it has steered a generation of talent away from building the future.

Once again - great book for those in corporate looking to innovate (who wouldn't do it otherwise). Or sympathizers to poorly executed consumer SaaS companies.

But not required reading in 2025 for people who want to change the world... IMO.