I recently finished reading the book "The Lean Startup", which I finally finished reading after months of delay because of this and that. When I was done, I had a plan to write a summary to put it here, so here we go.
I started reading again from the beginning, looking for the highlights I've made, then started writing the key points. I haven't finished rereading it yet. There are dozens of points that I've written so far. I'm confused about what to do with these, haha.
In the end, I just wrote something from the book which gave me the "OH" moment. I think the others are too technical, and it's better to read the book directly.
Back in high school, you could say I was a self-improvement enthusiast. I read many books about that topic, I was willing to sacrifice my time studying to read the books I bought or borrowed. I like self-improvement books because every time I turn a page, I feel like I'm growing little by little. Gradually the way I saw things changed. I understand better why things can be like that, why people can be like this, etc.
At that time, if we want to be successful, what I believe is that we must have a strong determination, a long-term mind, and be at the right time and place. But that changed when I graduated from high school. In high school, I could only read physical books, and after graduating, I started exploring digital books and found Google Play Books. It's better to read e-books because they are all on my phone, no need to carry books everywhere. The first book I finished on Play Books was The Lean Startup, written by Eric Ries. This book has changed my perspective on business success.
At the beginning of the book, and I think in most of it, there are many stories that made me pessimistic. Eric Ries has written many stories of companies, including his own, which are flawless in terms of competence. They are smart, tenacious, and at the right place and time. But, they failed.
In all the books I've read, it's always been said that we'll be successful if we practice and have the things we need. However, in the real world, it's not that easy. There are so many other factors that people rarely know about, even though they can be fatal if we ignore them. For startups, no matter how good the product, no matter how fast the release, no matter how economical the budget, it's useless if there is no customer and no one needs it. We must be able to know what they need, not what we think they need.
The biggest loss is being productive for things that you shouldn't even do. You have to be able to tell which activities give value, which ones are useless. Often when we fail, we say that it is natural because we are "still learning". Unfortunately, "still learning" can't be the reason we fail.
Learning does not have to fail first, and failing does not guarantee that we will learn. If the goal is only to see what will happen in the future, we can be sure that we will succeed in achieving that goal, but that does not mean that we will learn valuable lessons.
The other thoughts are still in bullet points. You can read them here (raw translation).