The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses · chapter 7 · id the-lean-startup-c7-05-ab-testing-split-testing-is-a-

“A/B testing (split testing) is a key technique for innovation accounting, allowing startups to measure the impact of specific changes on customer behavior.”

needs contextconfidence: high⚠ extracted by pipeline, re-audit pending

Receipts

Kohavi et al. (2009), Controlled Experiments on the Web, KDDDOI registry: valid

Online controlled experiments (A/B tests) were pioneered by Amazon, Google, and Microsoft in the early 2000s. By 2009, major tech companies ran thousands of concurrent experiments. The methodology was well-established before The Lean Startup.

Optimizely -- A/B Testing (founded 2010)source alive

Optimizely was founded in 2010, a year before The Lean Startup, specifically to democratize A/B testing for startups and enterprises.

Kohavi & Thomke (2017), HBRsource alive

A/B testing at scale requires statistical rigor that most startups lack. Common pitfalls include underpowered tests, multiple comparisons, and p-hacking.

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