How to Get Your Story Out to the Lean Startup Community

We want to do a better job of collecting the various anecdotes, advice, arguments, and other vibrant discussions of Lean Startup in one place — namely on our Medium blog where you all can engage with them, as well as on Lean Startup site blog. We also want to be more responsive to the people who’ve pitched us ideas for our blog over the years — folks who’re eager to write and share their stories and ideas with the Lean Startup community.

Lean Startup Co. is now accepting pitches for original blog posts, book excerpts, and other story ideas for our blog through this form.

We’re posting writers guidelines here so anyone interested in contributing to our blog has a framework through which to pitch us. Please read through all the rules below before submitting your blog pitch.

Blog rule #1: Don’t use the article to sell your product

Shameless self-promotion is an immediate turn off.

Blog rule #2: Keep your pitch to something than can fit in a 1,000 to 1,500 word piece

We like big ideas that are also succinct.

Blog rule #3: Connect your pitch to a core aspect of Lean Startup

If you want to tell the story of your company or organization, frame your talk like a case study from one of Eric’s books. We don’t want a typical founder story that could run in any business mag (and we bring this up because we get a lot of straightforward founder story pitches).

We want to hear about how Lean Startup practices moved through your organization in new, interesting, and unusual ways. We want to hear about how you implemented the methodology, how you challenged an inherent assumption, what kind of setbacks you encountered. The focus should be on how you and your team have digested and put Lean Startup to use; how you’ve made the concepts your own.

Blog rule #4: The more transparent you can be about those challenges, the better

Anyone who’s applied Lean Startup to their organization knows that committing to continuous innovation isn’t easy. That’s why articles that get real about everything that can and did go wrong resonate so deeply with our core audience. Tell us what your team tried that didn’t work. Describe your roadblocks and how you got through (or around) them to inspire the audience care about the journey you’re describing.

Blog rule #5: Strategy pieces should focus on new ideas with clear takeaways

We’re all searching for new ways to crack the innovation codes at our organizations. If your pitch reveals a brand new approach for making this happen, awesome. We’d love to hear it. The best strategy posts include fresh perspectives. They’re also succinct and well framed, setting up the idea, backing it with evidence, and giving the audience clear takeaways for how they can put your idea into practice at home. We’re looking for actionable takeaways, not just theories.

Blog rule #6: Don’t be afraid to pitch us a wild card concept

When we say there are many creative applications of the practice, we are encouraging you to get creative in your pitches too.

Blog rule #7: Keep the voice conversational

In keeping with Eric’s books, our baseline for everything we publish is a conversational, relatable voice. So we stay way from writing that sounds too academic or theoretical and really focus on relatable voices.

If you’ve read the above and would like to submit your pitch, please do so here.

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