Eric Ries Quotes

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.

The Lean Startup asks people to start measuring their productivity differently. 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. 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.

lazy registration is considered one of the design best practices for online services. In this system, customers do not have to register for the service up front. Instead, they immediately begin using the service and are asked to register only after they have had a chance to experience the service’s benefit.

Peter Drucker said, “There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all.”2

This is the same problem that established companies experience. Their past successes were built on a finely tuned engine of growth. If that engine runs its course and growth slows or stops, there can be a crisis if the company does not have new startups incubating within its ranks that can provide new sources of growth. Companies of any size can suffer from this perpetual affliction. They need to manage a portfolio of activities, simultaneously tuning their engine of growth and developing new sources of growth for when that engine inevitably runs its course.

It is also the right way to think about productivity in a startup: not in terms of how much stuff we are building but in terms of how much validated learning we’re getting for our efforts.

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.

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.

launching a low-quality early prototype, charging customers from day one, and using low-volume revenue targets as a way to drive accountability.

«Si yo eligiera un empleado al azar de cualquier nivel, departamento o región, y ese empleado tuviera una idea absolutamente brillante que abriera una fuente de crecimiento radicalmente nueva, ¿qué tendría que hacer para llevar su idea a la práctica? ¿Dispone la empresa de las herramientas de gestión necesarias para ampliar esa idea a fin de que genere el máximo impacto, aun cuando no se ajuste a ninguna de las líneas de negocio actuales?

They had “achieved failure” — successfully, faithfully, and rigorously executing a plan that turned out to have been utterly flawed.

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

The parent organization has to make it clear who the innovator is and make sure the innovator receives credit for having brought the new product to life — if it is successful.

In my Toyota interviews, when I asked what distinguishes the Toyota Way from other management approaches, the most common first response was genchi gembutsu — whether I was in manufacturing, product development, sales, distribution, or public affairs. You cannot be sure you really understand any part of any business problem unless you go and see for yourself firsthand. It is unacceptable to take anything for granted or to rely on the reports of others.

We adopted the view that our job was to find a synthesis between our vision and what customers would accept; it wasn’t to capitulate to what customers thought they wanted or to tell customers what they ought to want.