The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses · chapter 4 · id the-lean-startup-c4-02-zappos-founder-nick-swinmurn-v

“Zappos founder Nick Swinmurn validated demand by posting photos of shoes from local stores online before building inventory -- a textbook MVP experiment.”

holdsconfidence: high⚠ extracted by pipeline, re-audit pending

Receipts

Inc. Magazine -- The Zappos Way (2009)paywalled — manual check queued

Swinmurn started by photographing shoes at local Footwear etc. stores and posting them online to test demand before committing to inventory.

Tony Hsieh, Delivering Happiness (2010)source alive

Nick started the company by going to local shoe stores and taking photos. The original concept was purely to test whether people would buy shoes online.

This claim is a stable, citable object. If you can falsify a verdict, tell us — corrections are loud here.