An exploration of the lean startup approach among Brazilian digital startups

• Autor(a) principal: Chassagne, Ghislain Claude Emmanuel
• Data de Publicação: 2015
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional do FGV (FGV Repositório Digital)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10438/13698
• topic: Lean startup; Ciência política; Empresas novas - Brasil; Empreendedorismo; Eficiência organizacional

Too many startups abort for launching products that nobody wants and standards approaches like business planning and rigorous product evelopment have failed to diminish the number of startups failures. That is why a new methodology called 'The Lean Startup' has gained, for a few years, an important popularity among entrepreneurs that seek to reduce their risk of failure. The Lean Startup methodology was developed by Silicon Valley entrepreneurs to help startups to find the right product/market fit without spending a huge amount of money. Moreover, the Brazilian startup environment has been booming for the last few years in the wake of the last successful Brazilian cash outs. However, very few academic research have been conducted to explore the phenomenon of Lean Startup in Brazil. The purpose of this report is to identify which concepts of the Lean Startup methodology are applied in Brazil and understand if the approach is adapted regarding the specificities of the country. The results of this study have been collected through in-depth interviews with entrepreneurs operating in Brazil. The first conclusion is that Brazilian entrepreneurs are familiar with the Lean Startup approach and some of them have applied the main principles. Second, many interviewed entrepreneurs have encountered difficulties implementing the methodology, in particular during the 'get out of the building' phase. Finally, interviews showed that the Lean Startup methodology might not always be relevant to succeed in Brazil due to the size of the market and the high level of competition. It was found for the entrepreneurs interviewed that 'running fat' instead of 'running lean' can be an efficient approach to win in the Brazilian market in specific situations.