The Lean Startup

Stop me if you've heard this one before. Brilliant college kids sitting in a dorm are inventing the future. Heedless of boundaries, possessed of new technology and youthful enthusiasm, they build a new company from scratch. Their early success allows them to raise money and bring an amazing new product to market. They hire their friends, assemble a superstar team, and dare the wolrd to stop them.

Ten years and serveral startups ago, that was me, building my first company. I particulary remember a moment from back then: they moment I realized my company was going to fail. My cofounder and I were at our wits' end. The dot-com bubble and burst had burst, and we had spent all our money. We tried desperately to raise more capital, and we could not. It was like a breakup scene from a Hollywood movie: it was raining, and we were arguing in the street. We couldn't even agree on where to walk next, and so we parted in anger, heading in opposite directions. As a metaphor for our company's failture, this image of the two of us, lost in the rain and drifting apart, is perfect.