Eric Ries Quotes

Don’t be in a rush to get big. Be in a rush to have a great product.

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

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.

Learning is the essential unit of progress for startups.

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

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.

If we do not know who the customer is, we do not know what quality is.

If you cannot fail, you cannot learn.

A pivot is a change in strategy without a change in vision.

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.

Better to have bad news that's true than good news we made up

Every startup has a chance to change the world, by bringing not just a new product, but an entirely new institution into existence.

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

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.

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.

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

Innovation is a bottoms-up, decentralized, and unpredictable thing, but that doesn’t mean it cannot be managed.

Reading is good, action is better.

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.

By the time that product is ready to be distributed widely, it will already have established customers.

In a startup, both the problem and solution are unknown.

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.

Leadership requires creating conditions that enable employees to do the kinds of experimentation that entrepreneurship requires.

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.

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