Eric Ries Quotes

I hear entrepreneurs use the word 'disruption' on a daily basis and continuously hear the cliche change the world.

If you look now, more than ever new entrants, new upstarts, are able to grow so much faster than they could before.

I've tended to work at fast-growing companies that improve the way business gets done.

I believe that technology has the potential to change the fate of nations, industries and companies, as well as the context of our lives. I want to help build the companies that take the risks needed to make those kinds of real changes in the world.

The phrase 'change the world' is tossed around Silicon Valley conversations and business plans as freely as talk of 'early-stage investing' and 'beta tests.'

I do think there are more and more entrepreneurs all the time that think big. Those are the people we should be finding and funding. Most of them will fail, but the ones who succeed will change the world, and that is progress.

I don't think the disruptor and the business model of a disruptor necessarily is an indication of the topography of the future. If it did, you would say then that everyone will make high-end electric cars, when the answer is clearly no.

A startup is a human institution designed to deliver a new product or service under conditions of extreme uncertainty.

When we got Tesla going at the very beginning, if you asked me what I thought the odds of success were, I would have said less than 50%. I would have said that failure is the most likely outcome.

The strategic stimulus to economic development in Schumpeter's analysis is innovation, defined as the commercial or industrial application of something new---a new product, process or method of production, a new market or source of supply, a new form of commercial, business or financial organization.

I did interviews with most of the TechCrunch50 experts backstage and there was a common gripe about the companies launching there: Not enough passion, not enough swinging for the fences, not enough trying to change the world... One big exception was CitySourced - a company that excited Kevin Rose precisely because it was trying to build something that doesn't really exist today and would make a huge difference in people's lives. It was the most excited I saw an expert about anything over the two-day event.

Entrepreneurs have the flexibility and the ability to do things that large companies simply cannot. Could a large company pull off a trick like Amyris, going from anti-malaria medicine to next-generation fuel?

It's important to remember that innovators in business don't always get a platform.

Over the next 10 years, I expect many more industries to be disrupted by software, with new world-beating Silicon Valley companies doing the disruption in more cases than not.

We are proposing that there is value in a totally new product category and a totally new set of questions. Just like the Apple II proposed, 'Would you reasonably want a computer in your home if you weren't an accountant or professional?' That is the question Glass is asking, and I hope in the end that is how it will be judged.

I'm a creature of startups. For example, I don't want government interference in the startup ecosystem.

Most entrepreneurial ideas will sound crazy, stupid and uneconomic, and then they'll turn out to be right.

Entrepreneurship is about tackling big problems - often non-obvious problems - that will have a meaningful impact on the world, and this usually involves solving these problems in counterintuitive ways.

Not every innovation in transportation is going to come from government or even a large enterprise. There are smart people out there with tools and skills to come up with great ideas.

I feel that the best companies are started not because the founder wanted a company but because the founder wanted to change the world... If you decide you want to found a company, you maybe start to develop your first idea. And hire lots of workers.

It's shocking we don't see more engineers and entrepreneurs interested in enterprise.

And you know, I've had great fun turning quite a lot of different industries on their head and making sure those industries will never be the same again, because Virgin went in and took them on.

Great companies start because the founders want to change the world... not make a fast buck.

Whatever business you're in - it doesn't matter - it's going to commoditize over time. It's going to devalue. You've got to keep moving it to a higher value.