Eric Ries is an author and blogger of Startup Lessons Learned an d creator of the Lean Startup Methodology. Starting three businesses, he co-founded and served as CTO of IMVU, his third startup. With more than 40 million users to date and an annual revenue of 22 million, here is a look at some of the most invaluable Eric Ries quotes to remember.
“A solid process lays the foundation for a healthy culture, one where ideas are evaluated by merit and not by job title.”
“A startup is a human institution designed to create a new product or service under conditions of extreme uncertainty.”
“All innovation begins with vision. It’s what happens next that is critical.”
“Anything those customers experience from their interaction with a company should be considered part of that company’s product.”
“As you consider building your own minimum viable product, let this simple rule suffice: remove any feature, process, or effort that does not contribute directly to the learning you seek.”
“Build-Measure-Learn feedback loop is at the core of the Lean Startup model.”
“Entrepreneurship should be considered a viable career path for innovators inside large organizations.”
“I call this building an adaptive organization, one that automatically adjusts its process and performance to current conditions.”
“I particularly remember a moment from back then: the moment I realized my company was going to fail.”
“If you cannot fail, you cannot learn.”
“In the Lean Startup model, an experiment is more than just a theoretical inquiry; it is also a first product.”
“Innovation is a bottoms-up, decentralized, and unpredictable thing, but that doesn’t mean it cannot be managed.”
“Leadership requires creating conditions that enable employees to do the kinds of experimentation that entrepreneurship requires.”
“Part of the special challenge of being a startup is the near impossibility of having your idea, company, or product be noticed by anyone, let alone a competitor.”
“Reading is good, action is better.”
Check out @benparr and his new book Captivology: pic.twitter.com/LIemFF8PQD
— Eric Ries (@ericries) March 16, 2015
“Stop production so that production never has to stop.”
“Success is not delivering a feature; success is learning how to solve the customer’s problem.”
“The ability to learn faster from customers is the essential competitive advantage that startups must possess.”
“The big question of our time is not Can it be built? but Should it be built? This places us in an unusual historical moment: our future prosperity depends on the quality of our collective imaginations.”
“The only way to win is to learn faster than anyone else.”
“There is no bigger destroyer of creative potential than the misguided decision to persevere.”
“There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all.”
“This is one of the most important lessons of the scientific method: if you cannot fail, you cannot learn.”
“We must learn what customers really want, not what they say they want or what we think they should want.”
“We think we can truly short-circuit the ramp by killing things that don’t make sense fast and doubling down on the ones that do.”
“What if we found ourselves building something that nobody wanted? In that case what did it matter if we did it on time and on budget?”
“When blame inevitably arises, the most senior people in the room should repeat this mantra: if a mistake happens, shame on us for making it so easy to make that mistake.”
“When you have only one test, you don’t have entrepreneurs, you have politicians, because you have to sell.”
“You can’t take learning to the bank; you can’t spend it or invest it.”
“You cannot be sure you really understand any part of any business problem unless you go and see for yourself firsthand. It is unacceptable to take anything for granted or to rely on the reports of others.”
“Zero invites imagination, but small numbers invite questions about whether large numbers will ever materialize.”
Eric Ries makes an appearance at this Google talk discussing his book, ‘Lean Startup’ and strategies used to launch a new business with a shoestring budget.
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