About Lean Startup Machine

Lean Startup Machine is a three-day workshop where attendees use Customer Development and Lean Startup principles to validate an idea for a new product or service.

Bring your team, or come alone and new teams will form on Friday night.

Registration deadline 1/17

Speakers & Mentors

  • Sean Ellis
    Sean Ellis
    Qualaroo
    Currently CEO and Founder of Qualaroo, Sean is known for his expertise in bringing transformative growth to technology startups. He previously ran marketing at LogMeIn and Uproar from launch to NASDAQ IPO filings & helped bring Dropbox, Lookout, and Xobni to market.
  • Matt Munson
    Matt Munson
    Instacanvas, Inc.
    Matt is a co-founder and CEO of Instacanvas, a marketplace for buying and selling Instagram photography as canvas art (the Instacanvas team rigorously practices lean startup methodology and took 2nd at LSM Palo Alto in January). Matt has founded two successful startups and one failed startup. He loves helping wannabe founders become founders.
  • Lane Halley
    Lane Halley
    Carbon Five
    Lane is a product designer at Carbon Five, a company that uses lean design and agile construction methods to create Web and mobile products. Lane's a popular teacher and speaker on the subjects of user experience (UX), Lean Startup, agile and product design. As a mentor, Lane enjoys helping teams learn about their customers and engage in creative collaboration.
  • Patrick Vlaskovits
    Patrick Vlaskovits
    The Lean Entrepreneur
    Entrepreneur + author + collaborator. Founded two startups. Both dead-pooled. Co-wrote The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development. Working on second book, The Lean Entrepreneur (Wiley, Fall 2012). CMO at Drumbi, and a co-organizer of Los Angeles Lean Startup Circle. Mentor at 500 Startups.
  • Daina Linton
    Daina Linton
    Fashion Metric
    Engineer. Scientist. Entrepreneur. Daina is co-Founder and CEO at Fashion Metric - the winning team from LSM LA in June and finalist at AngelHack in July. Fashion Metric applies Lean Startup methodologies in developing an online solution for men to purchase shirts that actually fit their body-type.
  • Morgan Linton
    Morgan Linton
    Linton Investments
    Domain Name Investor and founder of Linton Investments. We turn great domain names into amazing brands and help startups acquire the domains of their dreams!
  • Joe Zulli
    Joe Zulli
    Savings.com
    Joe is the CTO of Savings.com, his second (and first successful) startup. He's also a founder and co-organizer, of LeanLA, one of the biggest, and certainly the baddest, Lean Startup based meetup groups this side of anywhere.
  • Eric Galen
    Eric Galen
    Music180.com
    Eric is an Entertainment and Technology lawyer and entrepreneur, with over 12 years of experience advising founders, growing startups and successful businesses. He is the founder of Music180.com, and actively works with Silicon Beach investors, incubators and development firms such as Originate, Science, io/LA, Citrusbyte, Lean LA, Neon Roots and many others.
  • Todd Emaus
    Todd Emaus
    Instacanvas, Inc.
    Todd is the product lead at Instacanvas, a marketplace for social photography and art. He's a firm believer in lean startup principles and is always happy to help other startups learn and grow faster.
  • Marc Simons
    Marc Simons
    OMD
    Marc has been guiding big brands as they navigate the startup space for over 5 years, looking for partnerships that will be mutually beneficial and will help move the advertising industry forward.
  • Chris Robinson
    Chris Robinson
    The Library Corporation
    Chris is a Principle Client-side Engineer for The Library Corporation with almost 10 years of experience in the web industry. He's an advocate for Agile Development and a Lean Startup Machine alum.
  • Jaime Levy
    Jaime Levy
    JLR Interactive
    Jaime has been an Interface Designer and User Experience Strategist specializing in disruptive interactivity for over 20+ years.
  • Yossi Langer
    Yossi Langer
    Viacom Inc
    Yossi runs a product development group and leads the Lean Testing Lab for Viacom Media Networks.
  • Sofia Agras
    Sofia Agras
    Strategic Advisory Group
    Sofia is a Business Innovation & Growth Strategist who's been on the founding team of many high-profile startups. An LSM LA alum, she has generated $150M+ through Sales/BizDev deals and advocates Customer Development as a mentor and startup advisor.
  • Mark Abramson
    Mark Abramson
    Forward Thought
    Mark is the founder of Forward Thought, Inc., a next generation, cloud-based supply chain, inventory and sales management system for high growth food importers and manufacturers. He is also the co-founder of Medicine of Cycling, Inc., vice chairman of USA Cycling, and won the Lean Startup Machine San Francisco.
  • Will Jessup
    Will Jessup
    Citrusbyte, LLC
    Will is the Managing Partner at Citrusbyte, a custom web application design & development firm. For the last decade he's been involved in the startup cycle with over two dozen different teams as an engineer, advisor or investor. He has deep product design, customer development & software development experience for both enterprise and consumer products & services.
  • Nicole Jordan
    Nicole Jordan
    Radix Collective
    Nicole has over 15 years experience leading and executing PR and communications strategy programs for major brands and start-ups of all stages.
  • Rob Emrich
    Rob Emrich
    PaeDae

The Organizers

  • Edlin Choi
    Edlin Choi
    Lean Startup Machine
    Edlin is passionate about the Lean Startup methodology and growing this international movement. He is the creator of the Morning Worm, an iPhone alarm app with an odd approach to waking you up, and is hellbent on finding a new problem to solve using Lean Startup priniciples.
  • Los Angeles
    Los Angeles
    Lean Startup Machine

What Our Alumni Say

Our Awesome Partners

  • Since 2010 LeanLA has helped Los Angeles tech entrepreneurs build successful businesses by learning and practicing Lean Startup techniques.
  • At Coloft, we make things happen. Meet and network with talented, like-minded people and be as productive as you can possibly be (Yes, it is that awesome!). Come by and start experiencing the Coloft effect (a.k.a. Colofting*).
  • Are you a a tech startup founder? Let's organize events to help each other crowdsource tasks that founders can't do alone. How about user-generated content writing parties? Market research events where everyone brings 25 copies of a survey for the group to fill out? Usability/UX testing demo days, where we take turns critiquing each other's apps? The possibilities are endless. We're all in the same boat, so we might as well help each other succeed.
  • CoFoundersLab is a startup focused on bringing together entrepreneurs with the aim of launching a Startup together. We do this matchmaking for entrepreneurs through in-person Meetups and through our online matching service.
  • The Los Angeles User Experience Meetup is a networking and professional development organization for everyone and anything UX in Southern California. We organize face-to-face events, and have an active mailing list. The group is 100% volunteer, and is not affiliated with any of the various professional organizations for our fledgling profession. The purpose of the group is to help support the burgeoning User Experience community.
  • To remove some of the friction in the discovery experience around LA Tech, we’ve developed a single online destination which aggregates news, events, jobs and other resources from multiple LA-based organizations. Our hope is that with the introduction of these consolidated resources, we can further grow and promote the Silicon Beach LA area.
  • Entrepreneurial Collegiate Consulting Organization is a community of student entrepreneurs at California State University Los Angeles. It was created to help inspire, educate, collaborate, and launch student-run small businesses at CSULA.

Learn to build what customers want.