LISTnet forming a Lean Startup group

Coming to Long Island next month, migrating from California: the Lean Startup movement!

Before you dismiss this as just another zany idea from the West Coast, you need to know the movement stems from a book by no less than an entrepreneur-in-residence at Harvard Business School, Eric Ries, 33, of San Francisco. In 2009 he wrote "Lean Startups," which is aimed at providing a fresh approach to creating companies.

Proof that there's interest: Since the book's publication, some 360 Lean Startup groups have formed in 182 cities in 37 countries. Now the Long Island Software & Technology Network is forming a LISTnet Lean Startup group at its offices in Hauppauge on Aug. 15. Participation is free.

LISTnet chairman Peter Goldsmith and vice chairman Tyler Roye are behind the local effort. Roye and Brian Turchin, president of Merrick-based executive coaching company Cape Horn Strategies, will conduct the group meetings, of which there are to be several.

In short, a Lean Startup is about what it says: starting lean.

Roye said that, in part, it means asking, first, not whether a product can be built, but whether it should be built. Then it means rapid development of a "minimum viable product" designed with a small number of parts that a small group of consumers will find valuable. The start-up, according to this idea, should then experiment with its product, adding or subtracting from it as customers dictate.

This is an entirely different approach than the traditional way of producing a massive amount of a product and hoping it sells.

"You need to get out of the building and interact with customers," said Roye, who noted he is using the Lean Startup method with his own Web company, GroupGifting.com.

Ann-Marie Scheidt, Stony Brook University's director of economic development, said she is reading Ries' book and thinks his ideas have merit. His concepts "sound simple, but the devil is absolutely in the details," Scheidt said.