Saurabh Gupta champions the lean startup era with his book MVP for Startups

In a world where technologists love building products, we find Saurabh building ideas and writing them down. A seasoned product leader and entrepreneur, Saurabh has quietly carved a distinct space for himself as a multi-genre author whose works span from deep technology to leadership psychology and startup strategy.

Across his six books published over more than a decade, Saurabh’s writing mirrors the evolution of modern innovation itself. His latest, Minimum Viable Product for Startups (BPB Publications, 2025), distills his experience of product-building wisdom into a playbook for founders navigating the chaos of early-stage growth. Prior to this came The Whys of the Mind and Leading Culture Change and Transformation (both 2023), where he turned his attention from systems to people, exploring how purpose, culture, and mindset shape organizational success.

Earlier in his career, Gupta authored several acclaimed technical titles including Practical Enterprise Data Lake Insights (Apress, 2018) and two definitive guides on Oracle PL/SQL (Packt Publishing, 2012 and 2016), which continue to serve as references for students, researchers, developers and database architects worldwide.

What sets him apart is not just the range of his subjects, but the continuity of curiosity that runs through them. Whether writing about data architectures or human motivation, his prose reflects a practitioner’s lens i.e. precise, applied, and deeply relevant. Each book captures a different phase of his journey: from engineer to strategist, from manager to maker, from corporate leader to startup founder.

Today, as a tech entrepreneur, Saurabh balances building technology with shaping thought. His writing continues to bridge the worlds of product innovation, organizational change, and human insight, making him one of the few Indian authors whose bibliography tells the story of technology’s human side and humanity’s technological side.

Minimum Viable Product for Startups

In his latest release, Minimum Viable Product for Startups, Gupta shifts from purely technical territory to a holistic, founder-centric manual. The book is a much-needed guide in the lean startup era, offering frameworks to validate ideas, test fast, learn continually, and scale responsibly. It’s aimed at early-stage founders, product managers, and anyone caught in the messy middle of transforming ideas into viable businesses.

While it still draws on his rich experience in tech and data, the emphasis here is more on mindset: avoiding the feature trap, embracing hypotheses over assumption, and ensuring that every iteration brings you closer to product-market alignment.

Technology can pivot. Features can change. Even markets evolve. But the one thing that must stay strong is your mindset - Saurabh Gupta

What sets apart the book

Hands-on & framework driven: Saurabh doesn’t leave readers stranded on abstract theory. He presents templates and frameworks that founders can follow step by step, while including real-world startup examples from product, data, and tech domains.

Balance between technical and strategic: Given his background, he has been able to reflect both engineering and the business view, thereby making the prose accessible but not simplistic.

Lean Startup Era Fit: His tone, advice, and structure feel especially relevant for today. Startups must move fast, test often, and scale with discipline. He writes for uncertainty, for change, for lean validation.

Purposeful & Reflective: Alongside strategy, he extensively encourages reflection on ethics, on grounded decisions, on delivering value rather than just chasing metrics.

Why It Matters

In an ecosystem crowded with “build fast, iterate” mantras, Minimum Viable Product for Startups stands out for its clarity and its insistence on doing things with intention. it’s a guide for building proof, not just products.