Eric Ries - The Lean Startup (2014)

22 Sourced Quotes

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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.

Eric Ries
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?

Eric Ries
The goal of every startup experiment is to discover how to build a sustainable business around that vision.

Eric Ries
The way forward is to learn to see every startup in any industry as a grand experiment.

Eric Ries
Customers don't care how much time something takes to build. They care only if it serves their needs.

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

Eric Ries
All innovation begins with vision. It's what happens next that is critical.

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

Eric Ries
A solid process lays the foundation for a healthy culture, one where ideas are evaluated by merit and not by job title.

Eric Ries
If the plan is to see what happens, a team is guaranteed to succeed - at seeing what happens - but won't necessarily gain validated learning - If you cannot fail, you cannot learn.

Eric Ries
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.

Eric Ries
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.

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

Eric Ries
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.

Eric Ries
A head start is rarely large enough to matter, and time spent in stealth mode-away from customers-is unlikely to provide a head start. The only way to win is to learn faster than anyone else.

Eric Ries
Zero invites imagination, but small numbers invite questions about whether large numbers will ever materialize.

Eric Ries
Sustainable growth is characterized by one simple rule: New customers come from the actions of past customers.

Eric Ries
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.

Eric Ries
Lean thinking defines value as providing benefit to the customer; anything else is waste.

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

Eric Ries
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.

Eric Ries
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.

Eric Ries