Hi there -
Here is this week’s “1 principle, 2 strategies, and 3 actionable tactics” for running lean…
1 Universal Principle
“Build a Minimum Viable Runway Before Your Minimum Viable Product.”
Steve was burning out, freelancing by day and building his virtual reality startup at night. But when he shifted focus to building runway first, he secured $180,000 in committed revenue in just four weeks - without writing any code.
My own expensive lessons came from BoxCloud and CloudFire. BoxCloud taught me that users don’t equal revenue when thousands of free users couldn’t be monetized. CloudFire demonstrated that even 500 paying customers were insufficient when the unit economics required 2 million leads to build a sustainable business.
2 Underlying Strategies at Play
I. Focus on Minimum Viable Runway Before MVP
Your biggest constraint isn’t the product - it’s how long you can survive while figuring everything out. Today’s investors only fund traction, expecting a working product, paying customers, and proven unit economics before they’ll even meet.
II. Target $10,000 Monthly Recurring Revenue Per Founder
This is the magic number that enables founders to quit their day jobs and focus 100% on their startups. While the exact amount may vary by location, it represents the minimum needed to cover basic survival costs while systematically validating and building the business.
3 Actionable Tactics
I. Validate Revenue Before Building
Focus on securing committed revenue before writing code or building products. This is the essence of demand validation for an idea. And yes, there's a playbook for that.
II. Test Pricing Early
Learn from CloudFire’s mistake - verify that your pricing model and customer acquisition math can support a sustainable business model. This is the essence of business model design. And there's a playbook for that, too.
III. Build a Systematic Customer Factory
The true job of an entrepreneur is building systems that turn unaware visitors into happy paying customers. You do this by ensuring your business model can consistently generate enough revenue to fund both the learning and early growth phases of your startup.
That’s all for today.
See you next week.
AshAuthor of Running Lean and creator of Lean Canvas
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P.S. Ready to build your minimum viable runway? Take my business model design challenge, where I’ll walk you through the MVR framework plus six other critical dimensions that determine whether your idea is worth pursuing. It’s the same systematic approach that’s helped thousands of founders avoid burning out before finding product-market fit.
P.P.S. Check out this week’s video: From $0 to $10,000/mo Without Building a Product:
