LEANSTACK

We build world-class tools, content, and coaching resources that help entrepreneurs succeed.

Authored Running Lean
Authored Scaling Lean
Created Lean Canvas

Founder/CEO

WiredReach

WiredReach enables the creation of dead-simple peer to web applications that blur the boundaries between the desktop and web. Our flagship product is BoxCloud - a dead-simple way for creatives to share large files with clients and co-workers.

Founder

Sonus Networks

Prior to founding WiredReach in 2002, Ash was Director of Software Development at telecom technologies inc., which was subsequently acquired by Sonus Networks in 2001. Ash built and led the development team responsible for tti’s distributed Voice over IP Softswitch product.

Director of Software Development

telecom technologies inc

He joined tti as a local number portability (LNP) expert at a time when tti was transitioning from a professional services company to a product company. He help put together a team and led the development project for their flagship product.

Nortel

Was part of an initial team of 5 people that later grew to 70 working on a local number portability administration system.

Software Engineer

Founder/CEO @ LEANSTACK | Bestselling author and founder

I have bootstrapped several products to millions of users and worked with thousands of early-stage entrepreneurs worldwide - helping them systematically find repeatable and scalable business models using my battle-tested playbooks. 

Instead of:
-Spending several months building a product you hope people will buy.

Imagine a world where you:
- Spend several weeks defining a product you know people will buy.

For aspiring or early-stage founders:

If you’re looking to bootstart your idea, consider joining my 30-day Business Model Design Challenge below: 

You'll learn how to:
- Find or test a big idea worth pursuing,
- Design a business model blueprint,
- Stress-test your idea before investing time, money, and effort. 

Join the next Business Model Design Challenge:
https://runlean.ly/challenge

Ash Maurya

“Startups don't starve. They drown...”

They drown in too much information, too much analysis, too much conflicting feedback, too much "important" work.

Where do you start?

Even mantras like "right action, right time," I espouse, run up against practical ground realities.

Most people simply guess or vibe their way, but here’s the expensive reality: When you don’t have a systematic way to prioritize and pick what feels most urgent or what the loudest customer complained about, you end up burning time, cash, and momentum.

In this week's YouTube video, I outline a 4-step prioritization framework I use for picking where to focus. It combines a popular product priorization framework, RICE, with Fermi Estimations.

RICE stands for:
• Reach: How many customers will this impact?
• Impact: What's the value per customer?
• Confidence: How certain are we?
• Effort: What's the cost to build?

The formula: (Reach × Impact × Confidence) ÷ Effort

But here's the problem most people face: How do you score objectively without fooling yourself?

Should onboarding be a 7 or an 8? Is that feature worth $5,000 or $7,500?

This is where Fermi estimation comes in...

Instead of false precision, I use order-of-magnitude scales:
• Reach: 1, 10, 100, 1,000, 10,000, 100,000
• Impact: $100, $1K, $10K, $100K
• Confidence: 20%, 50%, 80%
• Effort: 2 hours, 2 days, 2 weeks, 2 months

You go from fudging numbers to justify the thing you want to build to prioritizing the right work. More in the full video...

Running Lean & Lean Canvas | Helping first-time founders (everywhere) succeed through battle-tested playbooks.

The biggest mistake in launching a startup isn't moving too fast.

It's validating for too long.

After validating hundreds of business models, I've seen a pattern: Most founders get stuck chasing validation—surveys, interviews, feedback loops—hoping that one more data point will finally give them certainty.

But here's the truth: You'll never have perfect validation because startups are not an exact science. And no funnel ever converts anywhere near 100%.

The real question isn't "How do I get perfect validation?"

It's "How do I know when I have SUFFICIENT evidence to move forward?"

Three validation traps that waste time:

Trap #1: Confusing Learning with Traction
I've had founders tell me: "I ran over 50 customer interviews!" That's great—but when I ask "How many customers did you convert?" the number is disappointingly low or zero. In startups, you don't get a gold star for following a process. You get results from traction.

Trap #2: Waiting for Statistical Significance
Some founders dismiss customer conversations as "not statistically significant" and instead chase landing page experiments. Here's reality: When 10 out of 10 people tell you they don't want your product, that IS statistically significant. Plus, people grossly underestimate how much traffic and conversions you need for statistical significance. With limited runway, you can't afford to wait.

Trap #3: Over-Planning
Founders spend months creating pixel-perfect pitch decks, 5-year financial models, comprehensive competitive analysis, and elaborate business plans. Then they launch and learn it's all wrong. This isn't "being thorough." This is analysis paralysis disguised as validation.

The solution? The Minimum Success Criteria Framework.

You don't need perfect validation. You need minimum sufficient evidence at three levels:
- Founder level (3-year goal)
- 90-day cycle (quarterly traction)
- Experiment level (2-week tests)

Define your minimum threshold BEFORE you start, not AFTER. Make it specific, measurable, and tied to traction—not vague vibes like "everyone loved it."

Full framework breakdown in this week's YouTube video.

First-time founders obsess about their

- company/product name,
- domain name,
- logo.

Good names and domains are hard to come by and premature optimization. 

Second-time founders obsess about building something worth naming. 

Then they buy whatever name they want. 

Starting Risks  Scaling Risks.

Stop Obsessing Over Your Startup Name

You can teach an AI agent to code, but can you teach it to build, measure, and learn? 

We just did. 

Check out the latest LEANSpark episode here: 
https://lnkd.in/gDcqKPwz

Next unlock achieved: 
LEANSpark can now design and run 90-day cycles and LEAN sprints. 

It has full memory of your business model, metrics, and experiments... So you don't have to do context/prompt sit-ups... It's ready to hit the ground running when you are.

Stop building MUPs
MUP = Maximally Undifferentiated Product

Most MVPs Fail Because Founders Build the Wrong Thing

When there's lots of uncertainty, you need light-weight dynamic models, not heavy-weight static plans.

Choose
- a Lean Canvas over a Business Plan
- a Fermi Estimate over a financial forecast spreadsheet
- a Traction Roadmap over a Product Roadmap

Yesterday: Episode 1 went live.

146 founders got full access to the first behind-the-scenes validation session.

What they're watching: The backstory behind the most ambitious project I'm undertaking: Build a daily AI-cofounder for systematic startup validation.

This isn't theory. It's real work. Real uncertainty. Real decisions.

13 weeks of systematic validation, completely over-the-shoulder.

You can watch Episode 1 (the pilot) here: https://lnkd.in/g9WvtG9H

Full access (all 13 weeks): https://lnkd.in/gBSar2bS

Next Friday: Week 2 - Business Model Stress-testing

 #LeanStartup #ProductValidation #BuildingInPublic

Open article: Your AI co-founder for systematic validation by leanspark.leanfoundry.com

Your AI co-founder for systematic validation

You have a starting business model. You know what needs to be tested.

But you're staring at 50 different experiments you could run.

Which one do you start with?

Most founders freeze. Analysis paralysis sets in.

Or worse - they try running all 50 at once and make slow progress on everything.

Time is your scarcest resource. 

And you make the most progress by focusing on the right actions, not all actions, at the right time. 

---

Episode 3 of the LEANSpark Over-the-Shoulder series (dropping Friday) shows you how I solve this:

✓ Why 90-day cycles are the "Missing Middle" between your 3-year goal and daily tasks

✓ How to design a validation cycle that prioritizes your riskiest assumptions

✓ The actual 90-day plan LEANSpark designed for me 

✓ Real results: 142 paying customers in 14 days using this framework

Practice trumps theory. 

I'm documenting the entire LEANSpark launch in real-time - the decisions, the pivots, the lessons learned.

Watch the full series:
👉 https://lnkd.in/gDcqKPwz

Episode 1: How LEANSpark started (the origin story)
Episode 2: Business Model Stress Testing (finding blind spots)
Episode 3: 90-Day Cycle Planning (drops Friday)

If you're building a startup and tired of guessing which experiment to run next, this is for you.

Open article: LEANSpark - Over the Shoulder Series by leanfoundry.com

🚫 OTAs Suck ✅ Building a Book Direct, Decentralized, Open-OTA ➜ 🚀 Operators Get Direct Bookings ✈️ Travelers Get Rewards for Booking Direct 💰 Anyone Who Refers Travelers Owns Them & the Revenue Stream They Generate.

🐥 I'm a startup founder, launching a direct booking travel platform for the AI agent era.

Why? Today, Online Travel Agent (OTA) commissions are draining 10's of billions of dollars out of the travel ecosystem. They enrich "Big Tech" and "Big Travel", at the expense of everyone else. I know because I helped them do it. For years I was a super-affiliate of Expedia and other big OTAs. I fed $100m+ in hotel bookings to the OTAs, generating $10m in commissions, but adding little of value to the ecosystem.

Now, I'm building a new travel distribution platform and protocol that enables travelers and their AI agents bypass the OTA middlemen and book direct.

👇 Want to be notified when we launch? Leave a comment in the featured post below titled "AI-powered community", or reach out and connect! 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Previously...

🐣 I co-founded a venture studio. We launched 3 notable ventures:
 
1️⃣ 3Genius International. Network of travel booking websites. $100M+ in bookings and $10M+ in gross profit.

2️⃣ Moola.com. Multiplayer game. Grew virally to 450k community members, $7.6M economy. PCWorld's “Best Places to Waste Time on the Web”.
 
3️⃣ Locationary. Local data and community platform. Rewarded users for crowdsourcing local business data (eg. like for Apple Maps). $4.5M in funding. Acquired by Apple.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

🧠 Current Interests: AI, community, machine learning, travel, fintech, loyalty rewards, web3 / tokens / blockchain, creator & influencer economy, social commerce, marketplaces, network effects.

taplio

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Ash Maurya

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