BOOTSTART is a self-paced online course,
designed by Ash Maurya.

Go from idea to early traction without quitting your day job.

Imagine creating a product you know people will buy versus hope they will.

BOOTSTART delivers a step-by-step blueprint for bootstrapping an idea from concept to paying customers. It's the exact framework I've used to launch and grow my products to millions of people.

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Join thousands of other founders who have used this framework to get their ideas off the ground.

Do you have an idea gathering dust in the recess of your mind?

We have been taught to prepare. Prepare for the test, prepare for the big trip, prepare for the new project. Our natural tendency is to apply the same thinking to our ideas.

When we get hit with an idea, we spend too much time analyzing, or planning, or making excuses for not starting - we wait to first write a business plan, or find investors, or take a crash course on marketing, or coding, or <insert missing skill here>...

There is no shortage of courses and books out there but synthesizing and applying all this knowledge will easily take you thousands of hours.

This is why I created BOOTSTART.

BOOTSTART is the result of 10+ years of rigorous testing and thousands of hours of tinkering, iterating, and coaching on real-world products.

It is the closest thing you'll find to a curated, battle-tested, step-by-step playbook for systematically building a repeatable and scalable business.

What you'll learn?

My goal with BOOTSTART is to give you a systematic roadmap for vetting your idea and turning it into a repeatable and scalable business model without wasting resources.

It doesn't help to be constantly reminded that most products end up failing anyway.

But,

What if you could test the viability of your idea before quitting your day job?
What if you could find traction (aka paying customers) for your product even before building it?
What if you could use this early validation to de-risk your idea, build a team, and go all in on your project?

That is what you'll learn how to do.

What world-class entrepreneurs are saying

"A battle-tested approach to building companies that matter."

~ Eric Ries

Author of The Lean Startup

What you'll find inside

Actionable step-step mindsets, strategies, and tools for taking any idea from concept to early traction (aka paying customers).

Key Mindsets

What separates successful entrepreneurs isn't differing skillsets but mindsets. You'll learn 10 key mindsets that multiply your odds of building a successful startup.

Principles before Tactics

What separates successful entrepreneurs isn't differing skillsets but mindsets. You'll learn 10 key mindsets that multiply your odds of building a successful startup.

Overcoming Biases

BEWARE: this insidious cognitive bias will constantly conspire to your derail your startup’s progress. There is an antidote.

Business Model Design

CAUTION: Rushing into an idea often results in a "zombie startup." Ideas can consume years of your life. These stress-tests help you choose the right idea for your goals.

Uncovering Secrets

Every successful startup idea was built on an underlying secret or insight only the founder saw. You'll learn how to search for and uncover secrets within your idea.

Leveraging Inflections

All successful products share this one trait. It's also what every successful VC looks for in an idea. Uncovering it is the key to timing your idea for success.

Customer and Market Research

Talking to customers is hard. Why surveys and focus groups don’t work. And what to use instead to learn about your customers and market.

Validating Solutions Without a Product

You need a working prototype or MVP to land customers, right? Wrong. Having a half-baked or half-finished product actually scares away customers. This playbook shows you what to do instead.

Crafting a Compelling Unique Value Proposition

The first battle of any product is earning attention. But how do stand out in the crowd? Think different, not better.

Building a Defensible Unfair Advantage

Most entrepreneurs don’t start with a defensible unfair advantage. Discover how to navigate this on day one.

Key Metrics

More metrics are always better — right? Wrong. It’s easy to drown in a sea of non-actionable numbers. You'll learn how to build a lean company-wide dashboard instead.

Defining a Minimum Valuable Product (MVP)

The truth about product development. More features dilute your unique value proposition. This “5P matrix” helps you focus on what matters.

Achieving Clarity

How to pitch your idea to anyone clearly and concisely. This is a foundational skill to master for landing co-founders, advisors, customers, and investors.

Identifying Your True Competition

Are you using this unique positioning technique to sell? This is how customers really compare you to the competition.

Rapid Experimentation

Maximize your product development efforts: follow these seven habits for running highly effective experiments.

Maximizing Speed, Learning, and Focus

Going fast on everything is a recipe for getting lost faster. You'll learn a "systems-based" approach for driving the biggest impact with the least amount of effort.

The 10X Product Launch

Do public launches work better than private launches? It depends. Discover when to use private launches to learn faster.

Customer Behavior Design

If you’re trying to change your customer’s behavior with your product, this module covers Ash Maurya’s adaptation of behavior design techniques for products

An Offer Your Customers Cannot Refuse

The best products are based on a very simple concept. It will earn attention and trust, making your prospect more likely to buy.

Pricing Your Product

How to command fair pricing for your product. Pricing is one of the most underutilized growth levers.

Watch a sample lesson

Practice trumps theory

What sets this program apart is that it is taught and led by practicing entrepreneurs. We practice what we teach and the more we coach, the more we learn and share, the better results everyone gets. Everything in this program (content, tools, coaching) has been meta-recursively tested using every principle, technique, and tool in the program.

BOOTSTART is built by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs and it shows.

Who this course is for?

BOOTSTART is for early stage entrepreneurs, innovators, and visionaries
seeking to level up and build the next generation of products that matter.

You're a great fit if any of these are true:

You're an aspiring entrepreneur or innovator in the idea stage.
You're working on a digital, physical, or services product.
You've built and launched a new product (MVP) with few or no paying customers yet.

You're pre-product/market fit.

You're not a great fit if:

You aren't actively working on an idea. Our program is for doers.
You have a mature product with 20+ team members.
You have a working product with lots of customers getting ready to scale.

You're post-product/market fit.

What students are saying about BOOTSTART

Ready to BOOTSTART your idea?

A lot of people compare the learning in this course to getting an MBA from a top business school or joining a startup accelerator. But unlike those alternatives, this course doesn't cost thousands of dollars and you don't have to give up 5-7% of your equity.

BOOTSTART

$999/team

For teams of 1-5 people working on the same project

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WHAT'S INCLUDED

16 in-depth chapters

Lean Canvas and Traction Roadmap tools

Bonus Running Lean Book ($20 value)

Bonus Business Model Design Course ($200 value)

Bonus 1-year access to CustomerForces.ai copilot ($1,188 value)

Online Community

Lifetime updates

Lifetime access

In fact, many of the top business schools and startup accelerators already use our tools and curriculum in their programs
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WHO'S BEHIND THIS?

Hi - I'm Ash.
I help early-stage founders raise their odds of success.

In 2009, I had an epiphany:
Life’s Too Short to Build Something Nobody Wants.

I had launched dozens of products by then, but something bothered me. While all my ideas started off as awesome ideas, not all of them ended up as awesome products. I didn’t have a repeatable process for systematically navigating the highly uncertain terrain of early-stage products.

This sparked my search for a better and faster way for building successful products which first led me to the early works of Eric Ries and Steve Blank who pioneered the Lean Startup movement. I joined in on the conversation and began rigorously testing and applying these principles to my products.

This tinkering led to the development of several business modeling tools (Lean Canvas, Traction Roadmap, and the Customer Forces Canvas), two best-selling books (Running Lean and Scaling Lean), and a series of step-by-step playbooks for building and launching products (Continuous Innovation Framework).

Fast forward to today, over a million people use these tools and playbooks which I license through my company (LEANSTACK) to startups accelerators, universities, and corporates all over the world.

My mission is to help create more successful entrepreneurs in the next decade.

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Where Did BOOTSTART Come From and Who's Using It?

This course incorporates learning across hundreds of workshops and thousands of hours of coaching startup and corporate teams building products spanning a broad spectrum of domains ranging from banking to software.

The tools, curriculum, and coaching systems used in BOOTSTART have already been deployed and battle-tested across numerous enterprises, startup and corporate accelerators, and universities around the world.

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Alumni Case Studies

We have put hundreds of teams through this program across the world. Here are some of their stories:

GoodLawyer doubled their monthly recurring revenue after
LEANSTACK.

G2V took an idea from early concept to growing traction in less than 90 Days.

DealSimple was able to raise their pricing by 4X by positioning their real estate product in terms of what customers wanted to buy (an assistant) vs. what the team initially though they were selling (software).

TryDawn has already doubled revenue and is on track to 6X their revenue as a result of identifying and focussing on the key constraints in their therapist marketplace business model.

Trustini went from having no access to their customer segment (personal injury laywers) to booking dozens of interviews, closing sales, and delivering an MVP.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is this course for?

This course is for aspiring entrepreneurs and early-stage founders looking to bootstrap their way to a repeatable business model that works.

How many people can participate in a team?

Up to 5 people working on the same project.

Do you offer scholarships?

We don’t offer discounts or scholarships. Instead, we support Purchasing Power Parity Pricing. Based on your location, you might qualify for a reduced price. If you do, you’ll automatically see a banner with a discount code on the top of this page. Make sure to disable any VPN since this will block the banner from showing.

What kind of payment plans do you offer?

We’re happy to offer you “buy now, pay later” options through Affirm, Klarna and Afterpay/Clearpay, which enable you to pay for our courses in interest-free installments. You'll find these options on the checkout page. These options are currently only available in the United States.

Why should I join this program? Can't I get the same learnings from your books and free videos?

For the same reason that we attend schools and universities, or elite athletes hire coaches -- for experience, advice, and external accountability. That's what makes this program different from traditional courses. In addition, we are constantly evolving and refining our framework. You'll learn a completely revised problem discovery process with updated interview scripts and offer testing techniques not covered in any of my books.

Is this a remote or onsite coaching program?

The program is run 100% online using the LEANSTACK platform to deliver courses, tools, and on-demand workshops.

How much time will I be required to dedicate to this program?

We recommend allocating 15-20 hours a week.

Does this include lifetime access?

Yes. All the course content and updates are included with no extra payment.

Can you introduce me to investors?

Yes. We partner with a number of accelerators who teach our playbooks in their programs and are happy to introduce you to investors if fund-raising is part of your goal.

I still have questions!

Drop me an email at ash@leanstack.com.

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"Life's Too Short to Build Something Nobody Wants"

Ash Maurya

Author, creator of Lean Canvas, and founder of LEANSTACK.