Eric Ries Quotes

“1. Do consumers recognize that they have the problem you are trying to solve?
2. If there was a solution, would they buy it?
3. Would they buy it from us?
4. Can we build a solution for that problem?”

“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 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.”

“Ask most entrepreneurs who have decided to pivot and they will tell you that they wish they had made the decision sooner.”

“Build-Measure-Learn. The fundamental activity of a startup is to turn ideas into products, measure how customers respond, and then learn whether to pivot or persevere. All successful startup processes should be geared to accelerate that feedback loop.”

“Customers don’t care how much time something takes to build. They care only if it serves their needs.”

“Cycle after cycle, the team is working hard, but the business is not seeing results. Managers trained in a traditional model draw the logical conclusion: our team is not working hard, not working effectively, or not working efficiently.”

“Entrepreneurs are everywhere. You don’t have to work in a garage to be in a startup. The concept of entrepreneurship includes anyone who works within my definition of a startup: a human institution designed to create new products and services under conditions of extreme uncertainty. That means entrepreneurs are everywhere and the Lean Startup approach can work in any size company, even a very large enterprise, in any sector or industry.”

“Entrepreneurship is management. A startup is an institution, not just a product, and so it requires a new kind of management specifically geared to its context of extreme uncertainty. In fact, as I will argue later, I believe 'entrepreneur' should be considered a job title in all modern companies that depend on innovation for their future growth.”

“Entrepreneurship should be considered a viable career path for innovators inside large organizations.”

“Failure is a prerequisite to learning.”

“I have always been a bit of a troublemaker at the companies at which I have worked, pushing for rapid iteration, data-driven decision making, and early customer involvement.”

“I have learned from both my own successes and failures and those of many others that it’s the boring stuff that matters the most. Startup success is not a consequence of good genes or being in the right place at the right time. Startup success can be engineered by following the right process, which means it can be learned, which means it can be taught.”

“If we do not know who the customer is, we do not know what quality is.”

“If we stopped wasting people’s time, what would they do with it?”

“If you are asking, you’re not there yet.”

“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 accounting. To improve entrepreneurial outcomes and hold innovators accountable, we need to focus on the boring stuff: how to measure progress, how to set up milestones, and how to prioritize work. This requires a new kind of accounting designed for startups—and the people who hold them accountable.”

“Innovation is a bottoms-up, decentralized, and unpredictable thing, but that doesn’t mean it cannot be managed.”

“It is insufficient to exhort workers to try harder. Our current problems are caused by trying too hard—at the wrong things.”

“Leadership requires creating conditions that enable employees to do the kinds of experimentation that entrepreneurship requires.”

“Lean thinking defines value as providing benefit to the customer; anything else is waste.”

“Metcalfe’s law: the value of a network as a whole is proportional to the square of the number of participants. In other words, the more people in the network, the more valuable the network.”

“Most of the time, customers don’t know what they want in advance.”

“Only 5 percent of entrepreneurship is the big idea, the business model, the whiteboard strategizing, and the splitting up of the spoils.

The other 95 percent is the gritty work that is measured by innovation accounting: product prioritization decisions, deciding which customers to target or listen to, and having the courage to subject a grand vision to constant testing and feedback.”

“People are accustomed to thinking of accounting as dry and boring, a necessary evil used primarily to prepare financial reports and survive audits, but that is because accounting is something that has become taken for granted.”

“Reading is good, action is better.”