Eric Ries Quotes Page 2

“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.”

“Startups exist not just to make stuff, make money, or even serve customers. They exist to learn how to build a sustainable business.”

“Success is not delivering a feature; success is learning how to solve the customer’s problem.”

“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 Build-Measure-Learn feedback loop is at the core of the Lean Startup model.”

“The CEO and VP of product, instead of building their business, are engaged in the drudgery of solving just one customer’s problem. Instead of marketing themselves to millions, they sold themselves to one.”

“The goal of a startup is to figure out the right thing to build — the thing customers want and will pay for — as quickly as possible.”

“The Lean Startup asks people to start measuring their productivity differently. Because startups often accidentally build something nobody wants, it doesn’t matter much if they do it on time and on budget.”

“The Lean Startup is a new way of looking at the development of innovative new products that emphasizes fast iteration and customer insight, a huge vision, and great ambition, all at the same time.”

“The lesson of the MVP is that any additional work beyond what was required to start learning is waste, no matter how important it might have seemed at the time.”

“The only way to win is to learn faster than anyone else.”

“The point is not to find the average customer but to find early adopters: the customers who feel the need for the product most acutely. Those customers tend to be more forgiving of mistakes and are especially eager to give feedback.”

“There is a reason all past management revolutions have been led by engineers: management is human systems engineering.”

“There is no bigger destroyer of creative potential than the misguided decision to persevere.”

“This is an important rule: a good design is one that changes customer behavior for the better.”

“This is one of the most important discoveries of the lean manufacturing movement: you cannot trade quality for time. If you are causing (or missing) quality problems now, the resulting defects will slow you down later.”

“This is one of the most important lessons of the scientific method: if you cannot fail, you cannot learn.”

“Toyota discovered that small batches made their factories more efficient. In contrast, in the Lean Startup the goal is not to produce more stuff efficiently. It is to - as quickly as possible - learn how to build a sustainable business.”

“Waiting too long to release can lead to the ultimate waste: making something that nobody wants.”

“We do everything wrong: instead of spending years perfecting our technology, we build a minimum viable product, an early product that is terrible, full of bugs and crash-your-computer-yes-really stability problems.

Then we ship it to customers way before it’s ready. And we charge money for it. After securing initial customers, we change the product constantly — much too fast by traditional standards — shipping new versions of our product dozens of times every single day.”

“We must focus our energies exclusively on producing outcomes that the customer perceives as valuable.”

“We must learn what customers really want, not what they say they want or what we think they should want.”

“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 in doubt, simplify.”

“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.”