Content :

Book Name  – Scaling Lean: Mastering the key metrics for Startup Growth
Author Name – Ash Maurya 
Publisher – Penguin RandoM House LLC
Year of Publishing – 2016

Introduction:-

Ash Maurya is the author of Running Lean and his one line entrepreneurial setup help “Lean Canvas”. Scaling Lean is the follow up of the book Running Lean.  The writer has tried all the ideas which didn’t provide him with good results and to its result, Ash Maurya was able to finally hit the right one. The concepts and formulas are so flexible that one connects to its root level. All the chapters lead to one thing that a conceptualized and a studied model can be way more beneficial than a vague idea with no backbone. From Idea to product to team to customer to happiness, this book is “ALL IN ONE”. For many readers who’ve been following Mr. Maurya’s work this book may be a quick read as it plays much of a complimentary book for ‘Running Lean.’ The book is visible evidence of his hard work of so many years; the language is very inspiring and can be understood easily by the business-related-startup-interested-youngsters. In his first book, the author very well explained that “the true product of a successful entrepreneur is not just a great solution or an innovative piece of technology, but a repeatable process that connects your solution with paying customers.” Scaling Lean is to set up the initials if one aspires to build something. 
The book consists of 11 chapters each with beautiful headnotes and exercises. The author’s approach to writing this book seems very real, truthful, and actual help for all the individuals who want something to start their own. The author also believes that an entrepreneur can never be raised, they are born with it. From a younger age, people have that capability which pushes them to work towards their business; it is a matter of time, strategy, and resources that can change any body’s life. There are certain habits also mentioned in the book which let the person meet to reality, many a time when individuals are working for their dreams or any start project, they don’t accept their flaws and failures. This finally leads to destruction at the first stage. It is explained that the most important stakeholder is ‘YOU’ and the scarcest resource is you ‘TIME’.
From the introduction page, itself reader’s reading pace gets all set. While after reading you may consider it as all methodical and practical books, but only a few will understand that the author wrote his real-life business start-up practices and failures, which is altogether very inspirational for the young beginners. 
Book does make you practice the theory in just a few minutes. The chapters along with few exercises provide confidence so that one can believe that anyone can bring their business ideas into a reality and launch it. The writer not only focuses on one model but different models with different variants of it. He is the entire book mentions how his second book is more elaborative and effective in processes than his first book. A person like me who prefers working with a book or learning with lots and lots of examples is the perfect book filled with diagrams, charts, exercises; pointers, etc. to get you to work simultaneously with this book. It provides the entire spoon-feeding regarding the structural part.

MY FAVORITE LINES FROM EACH CHAPTER:-

Chapter 1 – ‘Making customers happy is easy than making happy customers.’ 
To make customers happy is easy as one can give away a lot of free stuff but to make happy customers is not just about what they do about your solution rather it is about the results too.

Chapter 2 - ‘Your business model, not your solution, is your product.’ 
When one launches a product many things go upside down so to have an effective business model is a win-win situation for the future.

Chapter 3 – ‘While Ideas are cheap, acting on them is quite expensive’ . 
Ideas need to be backed up by a plan, team and problem-solving reality, and all of this can cost much for a person hence need to have a lean canvas model to assess how and what can be done.

Chapter 4 – ‘Focus can shift to growth, which can be triggered by scaling up acquisition, retention, and referrals’. 
Focus is an important part of the discipline. Constant focusing always results in positive growth

Chapter 5 – ‘Engaged or happy customers churn less’

Chapter 6 – ‘When you don’t have resources, you become resourceful’

Chapter 7 – ‘Learn, Leverage, or Lift to attempt to break your main constraint.’ 
To break the constraints in one business is important to have transparent working.

Chapter 8 - ‘If you simply plan on seeing what happens, you will always succeed at seeing what happens because something is guaranteed to happen’ .
One cannot just mix and match stuff to see what happens, every action has an equal and opposite reaction and therefore one must keep a track of what sort of action they are taking.

Chapter 9 – ‘Knowing where the problems exist is not enough. You have to get to why.’ 
The quote is the answer in itself. This is a strong message to all those who in the future is going to work in a team and may face several problems, its existence will be visible but the solution is in the leader’s hands. 

Chapter 10 – ‘The two-pizza team rule: Any team should be small enough that it could be fed with two pizzas.” 
As the team starts growing in size, the communication becomes less therefore this rule by Jeff Bezos is a 100% yes rule for keeping the teamwork tight. 

Chapter 11 – ‘Hold yourself accountable’ 
Blame game is a disaster for any startup, the person with the entire idea must take the responsibility and hold himself/herself accountable.

CONCLUSION:-

As it is said that “Winners start early” if one has a startup idea that needs to have this book importantly. It not only gives us the structured and planned model of a startup but also methodically expresses what steps need to be taken at each phase of the start-up. You can make your short notes of it and try for your startup idea while reading the book. After reading ‘Scaling Lean’ I am motivated to share this book with each individual who wants to set up their own business and is ready to work hard to achieve that. One can achieve their start-up goal if they read this book twice and work harder than usual. Dreams aren’t fulfilled in a day, it takes time, so does building discipline. No doubt the author gets an invitation from the world’s best companies and institutes to talk about his idea and how he fulfilled it. As a reviewer and a reader, I believe that this is a must-read for people who aspire to step into the startups' world.