Eric Ries Quotes

I call this building an adaptive organization, one that automatically adjusts its process and performance to current conditions.

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.

Hidden among these mundane details are a handful of assumptions that require more courage to state — in the present tense — with a straight face: we assume that customers have a significant desire to use a product like ours, or we assume that supermarkets will carry our product. Acting as if these assumptions are true is a classic entrepreneur superpower. They are called leaps of faith precisely because the success of the entire venture rests on them. If they are true, tremendous opportunity awaits. If they are false, the startup risks total failure.

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

From the point of view of individual efficiency, working in large batches makes sense. It also has other benefits: it promotes skill building, makes it easier to hold individual contributors accountable, and, most important, allows experts to work without interruption. At least that’s the theory. Unfortunately, reality seldom works out that way.

Once a team is set up, what should it do? What process should it use? How should it be held accountable to performance milestones?

We have the capacity to build almost anything we can imagine. The big question of our time is not Can it be built? but Should it be built? This

make a sharp turn called a pivot or whether we should persevere along our current path.

it’s human nature to assume that when we see a mistake, it’s due to defects in someone else’s department, knowledge, or character,

Getting a startup’s engine of growth up and running is hard enough, but the truth is that every engine of growth eventually runs out of gas. Every engine is tied to a given set of customers and their related habits, preferences, advertising channels, and interconnections. At some point, that set of customers will be exhausted.

we were much more likely to run experiments on our customers than we were to cater to their whims.

For a report to be considered actionable, it must demonstrate clear cause and effect. Otherwise, it is a vanity metric.

The CEO and VP of product, instead of building their business, are engaged in the drudgery of solving just one customer’s problem. Instead of marketing themselves to millions, they sold themselves to one.

This led to some frustrating board meetings at which we could show great product “progress” but not much in the way of business results.

Remember, planning is a tool that only works in the presence of a long and stable operating history. And yet, do any of us feel that the world around us is getting more and more stable every day? Changing such a mind-set is hard but critical to startup success.