At IMVU, we opened up our board meetings to the whole company. Eric Ries More Quotes by Eric Ries More Quotes From Eric Ries We need to reengineer companies to focus on figuring out who the customer is, what's the market and what kind of product you should build. Eric Ries focus kind needs Most phenomenal startup teams create businesses that ultimately fail. Why? They built something that nobody wanted. Eric Ries phenomenal failing team Entrepreneurship is not really building a product, it's not having an idea, it's not being in the right place at the right time. It's fundamentally company building. Eric Ries entrepreneurship building ideas If you cannot fail, you cannot learn. Eric Ries failing ifs 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 quality historical imagination Start-ups make so many mistakes that the challenge to identify the root cause of a failure is tough. But believing in your own plan is probably the worst. Eric Ries roots mistake believe The way forward is to learn to see every startup in any industry as a grand experiment. Eric Ries way-forward experiments way If your goal is to make money, becoming an entrepreneur is a sucker's bet. Sure, some entrepreneurs make a lot of money, but if you calculate the amount of stress-inducing work and time it takes and multiply that by the low likelihood of success and eventual payoff, it is not a great way to get rich. Eric Ries entrepreneur stress goal Learning is the essential unit of progress for startups. Eric Ries units progress essentials 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 mvp lessons important At IMVU, the cost of customer acquisition through our five-dollar-a-day AdWords campaign was less than twenty-five cents. Our revenue from those same customers was more than a dollar. Eric Ries acquisition dollars twenties Science and vision are not opposites or even at odds. They need each other. I sometimes hear other startup folks say something along the lines of: 'If entrepreneurship was a science, then anyone could do it.' I'd like to point out that even science is a science, and still very few people can do it, let alone do it well. Eric Ries odds opposites people The United States is locked in a new arms race for that most precious resource - the future entrepreneurs upon whom economic growth depends. Substantial research shows that immigrants play a key role in American job creation. Eric Ries keys play jobs Entrepreneurs always pitch their idea as 'the X of Y,' so this is going to be 'the Microsoft of food.' And yet disruptive innovations usually don't have that character. Most of the time, if something seems like a good idea, it probably isn't. Eric Ries business character ideas The grim reality is that most start-ups fail. Most new products are not successful. Yet the story of perseverance, creative genius, and hard work persists. Eric Ries perseverance hard-work successful This is one of the most important lessons of the scientific method: if you cannot fail, you cannot learn. Eric Ries scientific-method lessons important In my first start-up, I had an initial advertising budget of $5 per day total. That would buy us 100 clicks per day. At $5 per day, marketing people scoffed and said that is too small to matter. But if you think about it, to an engineer, 100 real humans everyday giving your product a try means you can really start improving. Eric Ries real mean thinking Customers don't care how much time something takes to build. They care only if it serves their needs. Eric Ries care customers needs If we stopped wasting people's time, what would they do with it? Eric Ries trust ifs people Entrepreneurs can't forecast accurately, because they are trying something fundamentally new. So they will often be laughably behind plan - and on the brink of success. Eric Ries entrepreneur often-is trying
