Lean Startup, to Lean Company, to Rich Exit
How to Apply Kenan System's $1000 In, $1.5 Billion Out Principles to Today's Startups
by Kenan E. Sahin
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Pub Date Mar 26 2024 | Archive Date Mar 26 2024
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Description
Lean Startup, to Lean Company, to Rich Exit shares the remarkable story of Dr. Kenan Sahin, who took $1,000 in savings and used it to undertake the most extraordinary entrepreneurial journey, culminating with a $1.54 billion rich exit.
Kenan was teaching at MIT in the 1980s and sought to validate his many academic theories in a real-world lab. So he founded a startup to begin testing innovations in organizational development―challenging nearly every business best practice of the 1990s and largely transforming those practices. Among Kenan’s critical insights into rich-exit business success include…
- Suffusing the organization with a "teach and learn, learn and teach" mindset
- Empowering every team member to practice "situational leadership"
- Leveraging a lean team with "splitsuit" systems architecture development
- Recruiting and retaining the nation’s finest talent by hiring based on aptitude > attitude > willingness > experience (in order of importance)
- Turning performance reviews into company improvement exercises
- Improving on traditional profit-sharing formulas with a "gain sharing" formula
- Finding a way to reject outside funding and retain full ownership
- Replacing notions of customer satisfaction with "customer success"
- Finding the work/life balance that maximizes team productivity
- Bridging disconnects between sales & production, end-users & IT, management, and R&D
- Leaping the chasm from a service-based to a product company
- Combining judicious simplification with ambiguity tolerance to master complex situations
- Flattening internal communications so anyone can access anyone else
- Making "smart interruptibility" an accepted practice at every level of the company
- Developing the "bins, balls, and backplane" framework of modern user interfaces
- Rejecting the "Big IP Lie" and writing "peace contracts" to drive rich-exit potential
After just 17 years, Kenan’s company, Kenan Systems, was acquired by Lucent Technologies and he remained the sole shareholder. Importantly to him, all of his 750+ employees also benefitted from the exit. This is the inside look at how it happened. This is a field-tested framework for building a lean startup into a lean company and then a rich exit―the perfect model for any aspiring entrepreneur.
Since Kenan also pioneered large scale commercial AI and big data systems, the framework and principles of innovation he developed are even more relevant in today’s marketplace.
Advance Praise
“I really enjoyed reading Kenan Sahin’s book. His life, as well as this book, are what successful scientific entrepreneurship is all about. Starting with hardly any funds, he built a company that was acquired by Lucent for over a billion dollars. Dr. Sahin provides many lessons and stories that I expect will be of great value to any entrepreneur regardless of what business they want to create.”
—Professor Robert Langer
Institute Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
“This book is an unusual, and unusually compelling, contribution to the literature on innovation, leadership, and strategy. It is, most immediately, a heartfelt human story of courage, invention, growth, learning and reflection, and extraordinary impact. This human dimension extends further to the way that a company, if well run, can affect deeply the lives of its employees and other stakeholders. And we are reminded that organizations are the way that ideas change the world.
As to the ideas, the book offers excellent advice and insights for creating and sustaining a culture of innovation, for leading with values and authenticity, and for continued success in one of the most competitive and dynamic sectors. This is a useful, engaging, and fulfilling read.”
—David Schmittlein
John C Head III Dean, MIT Sloan School of Management
“Kenan Sahin is a legend. I remember hearing about the Kenan Systems’ exit and being shocked. It was and still is today the gold standard. In this well-written book, he humbly pulls back the curtain in an honest way, including exposing vulnerabilities, to reveal how it happens. It was not an accident and there are valuable lessons to be learned. A must read for all aspiring entrepreneurs.”
—Bill Aulet
Ethernet Inventors Professor of the Practice of Entrepreneurship, MIT Sloan School of Management
Managing Director, Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship
Author, Disciplined Entrepreneurship: 24 Steps to a Successful Startup
“Kenan has always been a technology and innovation optimist, and this thoughtful book is a testament to that commitment. Throughout his journey he has garnered valuable experiences in entrepreneurship, business futures, and what it takes to succeed. Read this book and, most importantly, learn from it so humanity profits from your work!”
—Larry Weber
Founder and CEO, Racepoint
Global Founder, Weber Shandwick
“Very few entrepreneurs go from bootstrap to success on the scale that Kenan Sahin has. Even fewer are also teachers who can mine the trials and tribulations of creating, cultivating, and growing a business and extract insights applicable to virtually any venture. That’s what Sahin has done with this wonderful book. It’s packed with anecdotes and lessons from an incredible journey that began with $1,000 and eventually led to the greatest philanthropic gift in MIT’s history. It’s a story “from start up to gratitude” that is not to be missed.”
—Robert Buderi
Former Editor in Chief, MIT Technology Review
Author, Where Futures Converge: Kendall Square and the Making of a Global Innovation Hub
“Kenan Sahin built a remarkable company following the mantra of a good teacher: By your students you’ll be taught. Paying attention to what he was learning as a consultant and a teacher at MIT, he turned much management theory on its head and continued to learn with his management team. Lean Startup, To Lean Company, To Rich Exit draws on his learning from the experience of Kenan Systems, the company he founded and managed along that path. Using striking parables to illuminate innovative management solutions, he shows how talent can be recruited, organized, and engaged in building a successful business in a rapidly changing technology and market envi¬ronment while working hard and having what they describe as the best times of their lives. A terrific read.”
—Joseph L. Bower
Donald Kirk David Professor of Business Administration Emeritus, Harvard Business School
“Kenan is a multifaceted person: an intellectual, a professor, an entrepreneur, wealth creator, philanthropist, and a turn-around professional. He is a complete person, and his life story has many very useful stories for anyone who wants to impact the world with their entrepreneurial zeal.”
—Dr. Gururaj “Desh” Deshpande
Cofounder, Sycamore Networks
President and Chairman, Spart Group, LLC
Cofounder, Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation at MIT
