Matt Mullenweg Quotes

If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you've launched too late.

At MakerBot, we joke that if we were engineers we would still be on our first prototype. There's something about just 'Doing it”iteration is a way of engineering.

Entrepreneurs need to start building today. The barrier to entry in tech is low, so start designing, start coding it, launch it, build prototypes, build a working version of it. The Internet has amazing powers of distribution. You can test your ideas. You can see if it works, if it doesn't work, whether it's fun, and whether you're sufficiently motivated. People who go into entrepreneurship to get rich aren't going to be happy. It’s the building of things that makes you happy. You have to enjoy the process whether you succeed or fail.

If you're going to build a lean enterprise, you can test and measure how often the company ships iterations, how often it fails, how often it is putting things in front of people that don't work.

I take a lean-startup approach: creating agile, interdisciplinary teams that get the minimum viable product to market as soon as possible. It's my job to be entrepreneur-in-residence, an internal change agent.

We built the iPod in weeks. It had to be what I thought it was going to be because there wasn't time for endless refinements.

The reality is the Lean Startup method is not about cost, it is about speed. Lean startups waste less money, because they use a disciplined approach to testing new products and ideas.

Internet and mobile product development cycles are measured in months, not years. And the capital required to get a product built and into the market is less than $1 million. And the returns, when things work out, can be enormous.

I've long believed that if you're not embarrassed by your first product release, you've released too late.

Get a minimum viable product out there, test it out, see how customers respond.

The lean startup method is not about cost, it is about speed.

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.

Not only is it possible to do lean startup in federal government, but it's the most effective way to drive change in the federal government.

As an entrepreneur you keep trying things, and I try everything. I try business ideas, on our website we test everything, iterate, iterate, iterate.

The most important thing in startups is getting a product to market, as imperfect as it may be, and then iterating on it and continually making it better. A first rev of a site that has a few typos may not be perfect, but it was the start of something that I deeply believed in.

In a start-up company, you basically throw out all assumptions every three weeks.

Apple Computer would not have reached its current peak of success if it had feared to roll the dice and launch products that didn't always hit the mark. In the mid-1990s, the company was considered washed up, Steve Jobs had departed, and a string of lackluster product launches unrelated to the company's core business.

You've got to stay super focused on shipping product. There isn't a version two or three if there isn't a great version one.

The reason why the Wright brothers were successful wasn't because they had the most resources, but because they understood how invention works. You have to iterate quickly, and you should be prepared to fail. Because things often don't go as planned.

Iteration, not ideation, is the most important part of early stage entrepreneurship. You have to have a lot of ideas - a lot of bad ideas - if you want to end up with a good one.

Decades before we were able to articulate the value of 'getting out of the building' and the Lean Startup, the value in having skunk works controlling their own distribution was starkly evident.

Build something, make something, test something, sell something. Learn for yourself if your idea is a good one.

Anyone who's really utilized collaboration has a philosophy like, 'Let's throw it all against the wall and see what sticks.' That's how we do it. At a certain point, we're cutting scripts that we love.

If you think you have a good idea, get into the marketplace as quickly as you can, using as little money as possible, and see what happens.

Not only because the product wasn't a great product, but remember it took us five or six years to ship it. Then we had to sort of fix it. That was what I might call Windows 7.