Eric Ries
Most entrepreneurs don't need as many customers as they think. A lot of people think 10 is too few for a sample. But if all 10 refused a product, why is that not enough? If you want 100, 1,000 or a million customers, you first have to get 10.
As an entrepreneur, I knew that if my company failed, I could always try again. So I often felt that the only real risk of true financial ruin came from the possibility of a serious illness that either exceeded my insurance plans lifetime limits, or was not covered due to rescission.
The biggest start-up successes - from Henry Ford to Bill Gates to Mark Zuckerberg - were pioneered by people from solidly middle-class backgrounds. These founders were not wealthy when they began. They were hungry for success, but knew they had a solid support system to fall back on if they failed.
Most start-up companies fail and it is smart public policy to help entrepreneurs increase their odds of succeeding. But, the biggest loss to our economy is not all the start-ups that didn't make it: It's the ones that might have been created but weren't.
Don’t be in a rush to get big. Be in a rush to have a great product.Collection: Motivational
The only way to win is to learn faster than anyone else.Collection: Winning
Learning is the essential unit of progress for startups.Collection: Progress
The minimum viable product is that version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort.Collection: Team
We must learn what customers really want, not what they say they want or what we think they should want.Collection: Inspiring
What differentiates the success stories from the failures is that the successful entrepreneurs had the foresight, the ability, and the tools to discover which parts of their plans were working brilliantly and which were misguided, and adapt their strategies accordingly.Collection: Successful
If you cannot fail, you cannot learn.Collection: Failing
A pivot is a change in strategy without a change in vision.Collection: Entrepreneur
If we do not know who the customer is, we do not know what quality is.Collection: Quality
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. In other words, 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.Collection: Ambition
A startup is a human institution designed to deliver a new product or service under conditions of extreme uncertainty.Collection: Institutions
Every startup has a chance to change the world, by bringing not just a new product, but an entirely new institution into existence.Collection: World
Better to have bad news that's true than good news we made upCollection: News
Innovation is a bottoms-up, decentralized, and unpredictable thing, but that doesn’t mean it cannot be managed.Collection: Mean
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.Collection: Simple
In the old economy, it was all about having the answers. But in today’s dynamic, lean economy, it’s more about asking the right questions. A More Beautiful Question is about figuring out how to ask, and answer, the questions that can lead to new opportunities and growth.Collection: Beautiful
Reading is good, action is better.Collection: Reading
Customers don't know what they want. There's plenty of good psychology research that shows that people are not able to accurately predict how they would behave in the future. So asking them, 'Would you buy my product if it had these three features?' or 'How would you react if we changed our product this way?' is a waste of time. They don't know.Collection: People
In a startup, both the problem and solution are unknown.Collection: Problem
This is one of the most important lessons of the scientific method: if you cannot fail, you cannot learn.Collection: Important
Products a start-up builds are really experiments…Learning about how to build a sustainable business is the outcome of those experiments [which follow] a three-step process: Build, measure, learn.” “[A startup is] … an organization dedicated to creating something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty.Collection: Organization
Leadership requires creating conditions that enable employees to do the kinds of experimentation that entrepreneurship requires.Collection: Creating
By the time that product is ready to be distributed widely, it will already have established customers.Collection: Ready
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.Collection: Imagination
New Customers come from the action of past customersCollection: Past
The hardest part is the grueling work of constantly being wrong.Collection: Hardest
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.Collection: Senior
The way forward is to learn to see every startup in any industry as a grand experiment.Collection: Way Forward
Using the Lean Startup approach, companies can create order not chaos by providing tools to test a vision continuously.Collection: Order
Because startups often accidentally build something nobody wants, it doesn’t matter much if they do it on time and on budget. 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.Collection: Goal
The goal of every startup experiment is to discover how to build a sustainable business around that vision.Collection: Goal
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.Collection: Mvp
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?Collection: What If
Entrepreneurs always pitch their idea as 'the X of Y,' so this is going to be 'the Microsoft of food.' And yet disruptive innovations usually don't have that character. Most of the time, if something seems like a good idea, it probably isn't.Collection: Business
A solid process lays the foundation for a healthy culture, one where ideas are evaluated by merit and not by job title.Collection: Jobs
Progress in manufacturing is measured by the production of high quality goods. The unit of progress for Lean Startups is validated learning-a rigorous method for demonstrating progress when one is embedded in the soil of extreme uncertainty.Collection: Quality Goods
The lean startup method is not about cost, it is about speed.Collection: Cost
Sustainable growth is characterized by one simple rule: New customers come from the actions of past customers.Collection: Past
Zero invites imagination, but small numbers invite questions about whether large numbers will ever materialize.Collection: Zero
All innovation begins with vision. It’s what happens next that is critical.Collection: Innovation
If you can’t out iterate someone who is trying to copy you, you’re toast anyway.Collection: Trying
If you don't know who your customer is, you don't know what quality is.Collection: Quality
The only person who can put you out of business, in the early days, is yourself.Collection: Persons
Customers don't care how much time something takes to build. They care only if it serves their needs.Collection: Needs
Lean thinking defines value as providing benefit to the customer; anything else is waste.Collection: Thinking