The short answer? Yes, writes The Lean Startup author Eric Ries.  

1: Asking potential customers what they want doesn’t work because many times, customers don’t know what they want.

A much better strategy, Eric suggests, is to build a simple product, a “minimum viable product” or MVP, and then watch what actual customers actually do. “The minimum viable product lacks many features that may prove essential later on,” Eric … continue reading

1: It was the summer of 2004. Three college sophomores traveled to Silicon Valley having recently started their fledgling college social network.

“It was live on a handful of college campuses. It was not the market-leading social network or even the first college social network; other companies had launched sooner and with more features, writes Eric Ries in The Lean Startup. “With 150,000 registered users, it made very little … continue reading