The guide to getting from starting up to scaling up.

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You don’t know if your startup idea is any good.

You’ve asked friends, and done your research, but that’s no guarantee. You don’t want to waste a year of your life working on something that no one actually wants.

Teague brought a fresh perspective to our business and helped us assess the potential of our application in quick and cost effective way. I highly recommend him to any startup that wants to take their business to the next level.David Goehl, Founder, Netbionics

Business school is expensive.

An MBA is really expensive, and takes two years. When you finally graduate, you’ll have to go work at someone else’s company for 2 more years to pay off all your student loans – and you don’t even know if it’ll really help you get started.

An MBA might not even teach you the skills you need to work at an early-stage company, much less start your own.

Teague was great; he provided clear, insightful feedback on the Lean Startup method and shared invaluable information on the path ahead. His suggestions have given me fresh perspective and – most importantly – clear ‘next-action’ steps that will speed up my startup journey!Jacob E. Dawson, Founder, Feedbaq

You’re not made of money, and you can’t raise it until you show some traction.

The old way of thinking about entrepreneurship was to raise a bunch of money, build a product, and see if people liked it. The Lean Startup turned that on it’s head by teaching entrepreneurs to validate the market for their product before spending the money to build it. Just because you understand that in theory doesn’t mean it’s actually easy to do!

You’re not alone. We can help.

Thousands of entrepreneurs struggle with overcoming the first hurdle: just getting started. You don’t need investors or co-founders. You can make significant progress from day one, but it can require rethinking your approach.

Doing Customer Development alone is too hard – when I need startup advice I turn to experienced colleagues like Teague. He has helped me see the patterns in data several times and he can help you as well. Do yourself a favor – get some advice from Teague.Kevin Dewalt, Founder, SoHelpful.me

A Better Way To Startup

I’ve been teaching an approach to innovation and entrepreneurship based on the lean startup for the last five years, and A Better Way to Startup is the culmination of helping hundreds of entrepreneurs like you find path from first steps to successful business.

I’ve included the most valuable tips and tools I’ve discovered that actually help founders apply theories to reality and make progress on building their business while systematically removing risk.

This concise book will teach you what you need to get your startup started up:

• How to test your business idea without spending a fortune
• How to manage the 3 biggest risks to your startup
• How the lean startup approach can save you time and money
• How to set your minimum success criteria for lean experiments
• How to pick a customer segment
• How to understand how your customers think about their problem
• What to look for in early adopters
• How to find customers to interview
• How to start serving your customers without writing a line of code
• and How to know when you’ve validated enough and it’s time to start building

Teague is an excellent ambassador to the Lean Startup movement. He cleared up confusion around Lean Startup buzzwords and put things in very clear, practical terms. Will look forward to taking more of Teague’s courses in the future.Ryan Moser, Software Engineer, ThredUP

About the Author

Teague Hopkins has consulted on innovation for the White House, TechStars, AOL, the EPA, Deloitte and many others, and taught lean startup for the DC Lean Startup Circle (one of the largest in the world), Lean Startup Machine, and hundreds of entrepreneurs. He has guest lectured and keynoted at George Washington, Georgetown, George Mason, and Wesleyan Universities.

Teague developed games and curriculum materials to teach entrepreneurship for the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Business program as a Fischer Fellow with Babson’s Serious Games Initiative.

Teague holds an MBA, cum laude, from Babson with double concentrations in entrepreneurship and technology management and a BA in Computer Science from Wesleyan University with a focus in digital media and human-computer interaction.