Eric Ries Quotes

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.

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.

I basically apply with my teams the lean startup principles I used in the private sector - go into Silicon Valley mode, work at startup speed, and attack, doing things in short amounts of time with extremely limited resources.

HubSpot has used the lean startup method to build a spectacularly successful company. What I particularly love about HubSpot is that they are so geeked out on data analysis and making evidence-based decisions, which are at the heart of the Lean Startup process.

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.

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.

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.

A Start Up is an institution designed to thrive in the soil of extreme uncertainty

I'm really inspired to build a billion-dollar company. The hardest part is building the vehicle to get you there.

Some people are serial entrepreneurs and want to just move on to the next thing. They just want to clean the slate and start from scratch. I feel that sometimes, too, and the way that we do that here is we build things inside Shutterstock: we launch new products all the time.

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

For decades, I've spoken of McDonald's as one of the premier examples of how to build a company, scale it, and ultimately sell it.

There are a lot more companies with a lot younger people. It is just like 23-year-olds are starting companies, and they are scaling really quickly.

Customer Development changes almost every aspect of startup behavior, performance, metrics, and, as often as not, success potential.

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.

The Lean Startup process builds new ventures more efficiently. It has three parts: a business model canvas to frame hypotheses, customer development to get out of the building to test those hypotheses, and agile engineering to build minimum viable products.

The Lean Startup is a process for turning ideas into commercial ventures. Its premise is that startups begin with a series of untested hypotheses. They succeed by getting out of the building, testing those hypotheses and learning by iterating and refining minimal viable products in front of potential customers.

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.

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

Darwinism may be a fine theory in other contexts, but in startups, intelligent design works best.

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.

Essentials of how to do a startup do not include writing a business plan

It's hard to tell with these Internet startups if they're really interested in building companies or if they're just interested in the money. I can tell you, though: If they don't really want to build a company, they won't luck into it. That's because it's so hard that if you don't have a passion, you'll give up.

You can make something big when young that will carry you through life. Look at all the big startups like Microsoft, Apple, Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc. They were all started by very young people who stumbled on something of unseen value. You'll know it when you hit a home run.

Over the last 20 years, I've worked on or invested in many companies that scaled to 100 million users or more. But here's the thing: You don't start with 100 million users. You start with a few. So, stop thinking big, and start thinking small.