Have you heard of Lean Startup? Nowadays, the entrepreneurial cycle is changing rapidly, and speed determines success or failure. In the past, Pakistan’s manufacturing industry’s high capital expenditures to build factories to reduce production capacity and cost has become narrower under the threat of the red supply chain.
Therefore, it is necessary to use a lean entrepreneurial method to change the thinking of the industry and to transform, through the creation of Minimum Viable Products (MVP), trial and error in the market, quick corrections after receiving feedback from customers, and then refine the star of the Pakistan brand commodity.
What is Lean Startup?
Lean Entrepreneurship was proposed by Silicon Valley entrepreneur Eric Ries. Start-ups quickly cycle through the three steps of Build-Measure-Learn, put forward market demand assumptions, and launch a small number of minimum viable products (product prototypes with core features, simple (For semi-finished products), test user responses on the market to verify whether the hypothesis is correct. After obtaining market sales response and customer feedback, quickly learn to modify and optimize (Optimize) or simply discard the product line and find the right direction. Pivot Abandon infeasible solutions, ensure that one’s energy is focused on the right path, and invest resources to accelerate growth (Scale) after the right product is on track.
“Experiment is the only criterion for testing vision” is the core concept of lean entrepreneurship. Companies do not pursue a perfect long-term vision and business plan, nor do they try to build a perfect product behind closed doors before going public. Instead, they first launch an MVP and fight and go. Through continuous market feedback, we can quickly learn, modify and optimize from it to focus on creating products that the market needs and wants. Stanford Business School professor Steve Blank has an insightful comment, “Except for venture capital VCs and the former Soviet Union, no one will use five-year plans to predict a completely unknown future. These plans are essays. Almost all dreams like this I was wasting time.”
Lean entrepreneurial process
The lean entrepreneurial process reduces a variety of wastes, including;
- The market does not have this problem at all, but the company takes time to propose solutions to the non-existent problem
- The problem is found, but the solution is not what the customer wants. The hair is half washed, but there is still no market.
- Optimizing the product too early to achieve close to perfection, but not hitting the pain points that customers care about, and using the wrong energy
I imagined expansion too early, and I didn’t even know whether the idea or product was feasible, so I was thinking about finding venture capital, building a factory, etc.
The external factors hindering lean entrepreneurship have disappeared
In the past business environment, the cost of small start-ups was very high whether it was to reach the first consumer or to modify the product, let alone sell the product overseas, but now the online e-commerce is developed and 3D printing With the introduction of new cloud technologies, the threshold for reaching first-line customers and a small number of trial productions has been greatly reduced, shortening the development cycle of products to reduce the risk of market uncertainty.
Even for large companies, the spirit of lean entrepreneurship can also be used in internal innovation and research and development, encouraging employees to develop products or ideas to try and make mistakes and continue to accept market tests, maintaining flexibility and quickly responding to customer needs to make corrections. Survive in rapid market changes. Even aircraft carrier-class companies like General Electric (GE) have begun to introduce innovative methods of lean entrepreneurship. It is not justified for Pakistani manufacturers to use large ships as a reason for not turning easily. What hinders Pakistani manufacturers from innovating and going global is the change of mentality. The cost of failure has been reduced. Pakistani manufacturers should no longer be afraid or hate failure and refrain from trying.
How do Pakistani manufacturers begin to use the spirit of lean entrepreneurial transformation to export their products to Europe and the United States?
In the face of an unknown market, Marketingskull.com cross-border e-commerce consultants provide customers with the overall operation process of cross-border sales with a lean entrepreneurial spirit. Through professional consulting, companies can greatly reduce trial and error costs and make products in Amazon, Europe and the United States. After the e-commerce giant is on the shelves, it can accurately hit the target consumers, and after obtaining consumer feedback, provide manufacturers with optimization suggestions, further improving customer satisfaction and sales, making the product a long-term hot-selling Pakistani brand.
The reason for choosing Amazon as a platform for cross-border sales is that its existing huge traffic can be seen by overseas consumers, and in the past, goods shipped through overseas warehouses or third-party warehouses, but Amazon provides Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA)’s logistics management service greatly reduces the time cost. It only takes one week for the goods to be sent to the Amazon warehousing and then the products are put on the shelves. At the same time, FBA is connected to Amazon’s sales system and can be directly delivered to customers when sales are generated. Manufacturers on Amazon You can start business quickly.
After the products have been successfully sold on the Amazon platform to accumulate a customer base, Marketingskull.com can further assist manufacturers to set up their own official websites and sales platforms, allowing manufacturers to save channel costs, grasp overseas customer information for data analysis, and manage through customer relationships ( CRM) to allow customers to continue to come back to consume and establish a long-term brand business model.
Lean entrepreneurial model in Silicon Valley
Lean entrepreneurship is already a popular entrepreneurial model in Silicon Valley. This method uses hypotheses on demand, develops minimum viable products, directly tests market responses, optimizes or pivots to viable products according to market demand, and shortens the product development cycle and reduce development costs to adapt to the rapidly changing market. It has profound inspiration for Pakistan’s traditional foundries and manufacturers who want to transform and find a way out, and it is also a very important spirit to accelerate the innovation cycle.
