The Lean Launchpad: A Scientific Approach to Entrepreneurship

What is the most reliable way to build a startup today? For many, the answer is the Lean Launchpad.

Developed by Steve Blank (serial entrepreneur and adjunct professor at Stanford), this methodology is designed as a repeatable process to create a startup. It has become the gold standard in entrepreneurship education, featuring heavily in university curricula and top accelerator programs like Y-Combinator.

The Core Premise: "Get Out of the Building"

Unlike traditional business models that focus on writing lengthy business plans, the Lean Launchpad focuses on testing hypotheses. It operates on the belief that founders do not know what the customer wants until they leave the office and ask.

[Image of Steve Blank customer development model]

The Theoretical Basis: Discovery vs. Creation

To understand why the Lean Launchpad works, we must look at the academic theories behind it. Entrepreneurship literature is generally divided into two schools of thought regarding the nature of opportunities:

The Creationist School: Views entrepreneurship as a process of opportunity creation. Founders imagine a future that doesn't exist yet and build it (McMullen and Dimov, 2013).
The Discovery School: Defends an objective view where opportunities already exist in the market, independent of the entrepreneur. The founder's job is to race to discover and exploit them (Baron, 2006).

Why Lean Launchpad is a "Discovery" Theory

The Lean Launchpad aligns firmly with Discovery Theory. Why?

Because the process requires potential entrepreneurs to start with a customer segment and then search to identify problems worth solving. They do this by interviewing early adopters to "validate" that the problem is real.

Both of these tenets are grounded in a belief about reality where problems are objective facts waiting to be verified. The methodology assumes that if you iterate enough—through a process of elimination and customer feedback—you will inevitably "discover" the profitable product-market fit.

Empirical Research vs. Popularity

Despite its massive popularity in the startup world, there is surprisingly little empirical research examining the efficacy of the method. While anecdotal success stories (like Dropbox or Airbnb) are cited often, rigorous academic testing of the Lean Launchpad is still an emerging field.