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. “Kenan Sahin is a legend. I remember hearing about the Kenan Systems exit and being shocked. It still is 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 accidentand there are valuable lessons to be learned. A must read forall aspiring entrepreneurs.” Dr. 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 Sahin built a remarkable company following the mantra of a good teacher, ‘by your students you’ll be taught.’ Using striking parables to illuminate innovative management solutions he shows how talent can be recruited, organized, and engaged in building a successful business while working hard and having what they describe as the best times of their lives.” Joseph L. Bower author; distinguished professor, Harvard Business School "Few entrepreneurs go from bootstrap to success on the scale that Kenan Sahin has. Even fewer are also teachers who can mine the insights applicable to virtually any venture...an incredible journey that is not to be missed." Robert Buderi author, founder, and editor in chief, MIT Technology Review “An intellectual, a professor, an entrepreneur, wealth creator, philanthropist, and a turn-around professional, Kenan’s life story has many useful stories for anyone who wants to impact the world with their entrepreneurial zeal.” Dr. Gururaj "Desh" Deshpande distinguished professor, MIT; founder, Sycamore Network s "What successful scientific entrepreneurship is all about...of great value to any entrepreneur.” Dr. Robert S. Langer biotechnician; businessman; distinguished professor, MIT “An unusual, and unusually compelling, contribution to the literature on innovation, leadership, and strategy...a heartfelt human story of courage, invention, growth, learning and reflection, and extraordinary impact.” Dr. David Schmittlein Dean and Professor of Marketing MIT Sloan School of Management “This thoughtful book is a testament to Kenan’s commitment to technology and innovation. He has garnered valuable experiences in entrepreneurship and what it takes to succeed!” Larry Weber businessman, author of Authentic Marketing: How to Capture Hearts and Minds through the Power of Purpose “Only the beginning of a wave of stock-market-fueled philanthro