1. Overview and “Real-life” Example John A. Printen, Ph.D.
The Lean Start-up
Overview and “Real-life” Example
John A. Printen, Ph.D.

2. Presentation Overview
What is a Lean Start-up?
Why use Lean Start-up Methodology?
Fundamentals of Lean Start-up
Putting Lean Start-up into practice: The Cellara Story
Questions (and maybe) Answers

3. Lean Start-up
“A start-up is an organization dedicated to creating something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty”
Eric Ries
A Lean Start-up employs methodology to RAPIDLY determine what customers REALLY want, and will PAY for.

4. Why Lean Start-up? Traditional Start-up Lean Start-up
High risk of market failure
Capital Intensive
Inflexible
Lower risk of market failure
Capital sparing
Highly flexible

5. Entrepreneurs are everywhere Entrepreneurship is Management
5 Basic Principles
Entrepreneurs are everywhere
Entrepreneurship is Management
Validated Learning
Innovation Accounting
Build-Measure-Learn
The 5 Principles of The Lean Startup Methodology are:
1. Entrepreneurs are everywhere
You don’t have to be in a garage to be a startup (but you can be). Entrepreneurs are at GE, in the IRS, in Hollywood. They are in Intuit, in healthcare and revolutionizing the government.
2. Entrepreneurship is management
A startup is an institution, not just a product, so it requires management, a new kind of management specifically geared to its context.
3. Validated Learning
Startups exist not to make stuff, make money, or serve customers. They exist to learn how to build a sustainable business. This learning can be validated scientifically, by running experiments that allow us to test each element of our vision.
4. Innovation Accounting
To improve entrepreneurial outcomes, and to hold entrepreneurs accountable, we need to focus on the boring stuff: how to measure progress, how to setup milestones, how to prioritize work. This requires a new kind of accounting, specific to startups.
5. BUILD-MEASURE-LEARN

6. Validated Learning
Validated learning is the process of demonstrating empirically that a team has discovered valuable truths about a start-ups present and future business prospects.
The essential unit of progress for start-ups
Validated learning is backed up by empirical data collected from real customers
Foundation is in experimentation

7. Innovation Accounting
Start-ups need a different set of metrics than established businesses
Holds entrepreneur accountable with stakeholders
Meaningful vs. vanity metrics
Only 5% of entrepreneurship is the big idea; the other 95% is the gritty work that is measured by innovation accounting- product idea prioritization, which customers to target, constant testing and brutal honesty.

8. Build-Measure-Learn Key to Lean Start-up thinking
Experimentation to empirically determine what will add value or what will be waste
Seek to accelerate this feedback loop
Saves time and capital, while building value
Learning drives pivot or persevere decision

9. Types of Pivots
The “Blind” Pivot
The Buzzword Pivot

10. The Cellara Story
Approached in mid-2014 to help commercialize a new concept in stem cell biology: A benchtop device to fully automate stem cell culture.
Founders were engineers
Over beers with a colleague, heard how tedious/time consuming/error prone, etc. stem cell culture was to conduct
Stem cell research was a hot area of bioscience and set to grow rapidly (iPSCs recently described)
Company founded in 2013 to drive product idea towards market

11. Pivot I
Formed hypotheses
“Built” MVP
Talked to Customers

12. Microscope + Liquid Handler
Pivot I
Learnings:
Customers liked idea of automated stem cell culture
Ability to visualize cells crucial
Microscope + Liquid Handler

13. Microscope + Liquid Handler
Pivot II
Formed hypotheses
“Modified” MVP
Microscope + Liquid Handler
Talked to Customers

14. Microscope + Liquid Handler
Pivot II
Learnings:
Customers worried about cells being left out in the open
Strong expressed need for 24/7 “hands-off” maintenance of cell cultures (especially weekends)
Wanted to do experiments under low-oxygen conditions
Microscope + Liquid Handler

15. Pivot III Facing the brutal truth:
Scanning Pipettor
Label Printer
Cells
Culture Plates
Media & Reagents
Cloud Database
Barcode Labels
Projects
Protocols
Materials
Tablet & App
Planning & Design
Reporting
Management
User/Lab
Facing the brutal truth:
Developing a stand alone, fully automated system was beyond the capabilities of a start- up
However, the IT component to build a functional user interface had value to customer

16. Cloud database for lab group
MVP
Cloud database for lab group
Tablet app
Web application
Create protocols
Plan & execute daily tasks
Search & report
Manage projects

17. First Product Release- 11/16
“Electronic Health Records for Stem Cells”
Established multiple “Early Access” partners in the area to provide rapid, user-centric feedback as the software was being developed
Signed on a world-renowned stem cell lab as early adopter (Paid!)
Used at Madison Technical College Stem Cell Training Program
First Commercial release will be lacking features, but will be commercially viable