Harvard Business Review LogoSeptember 9, 2026Illustration by Clara San MillánToday, a single individual enabled by AI can—at very low cost—perform many activities needed to establish a startup quickly and in parallel: generating product ideas, simulatingAlmost two decades ago, the entrepreneur and author Eric Ries launched a methodology for the “lean startup.” In this approach, a new business could be launched with just capital, a minimum viable product, a team, extensive discussions with potential customers, and a process of repeated pivoting as the startup scaled. The lean startup approach combined Toyota’s lean manufacturing method with Stanford professor Steve Blank’s approaches to customer development. Because founders typically had few resources at their disposal, the lean approach took hold.