The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 24 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Ries: Corporate bureaucracy and slowness at scale are choices, not inevitable
“I have become a believer that even that the bureau, that the bureaucracy and slowness and kind of ossification that we take for granted as a result of scale is not an inevitable development, but it's a choice about the systems of management that we use.”
Ries: Entrepreneurship is defined by extreme uncertainty, not job title
“Since my definition of entrepreneurship is trying to create something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty, then you are an entrepreneur no matter what it says on your business card.”
Ries: Founder CEOs at scaled companies act as internal venture capitalists
“For the people inside their company, they're the VC. They're the source of funding and political capital that everybody needs to sustain what they do.”
Ries: A small group of passionate customers outweighs indifferent users
“A small number of extremely passionate customers is way better than a large number of people who kind of are indifferent about your product”
Eric Ries: Monotonous work should be automated to unlock human creativity
“Work that is monotonous and routine should be automated because every human being has a right to use their creativity in their job.”
Ries: MVPs are for testing consequential visions, not cheap features
“The core mistake I think people make is they think that it's a minimum product, right? Like if you're trying to do something small in this world, you don't need to do an MVP. You just do it. Like if it's, if the thing itself is cheap and easy and has an obviou…”
Ries: Forcing founders into 'success theater' distracts from product execution
“And I think every ounce of energy we force visionaries to put into success theater is an ounce of energy they didn't put in to making their vision a reality. They didn't put into serving customers.”
Ries: Even correct entrepreneurial visions usually have fatal strategy flaws
“If you get the real story with actual entrepreneurs, what you discover is that even if the vision is right on and they see the future, the specifics of the strategy often have fatal flaws.”
Ries: Entrepreneurs can now rent the means of production to scale
“We are now living through a time where you can rent the means of production, which means that if you want to test an idea, if you want to start something in your dorm room at Harvard, You know, just because you started small doesn't necessarily mean it can't s…”
Ries: Open platform strategies create smaller pieces of larger aggregate markets
“If you make those tools available to other people so that you don't have complete control, if you turn it into a platform, if you give people open access, the sum total of the creative power that you unleash when you do that means that you have a smaller piece…”
Ries: Forecasts are accurate only when extrapolated from stable history
“A forecast is accurate only to the extent that it is an extrapolation from a long and stable operating history.”
Ries: Functional silos block enterprises from spending $2M to commercialize breakthroughs
“These companies can spend through their technology readiness level, you know, analysis and portfolio, like they can do the smart research to spend five, 10, 15, fifty million dollars To have a breakthrough. And then they often are not able to spend the like tw…”
Ries: Continuous corporate disruption requires hundreds of simultaneous experiments
“If you want to have a new successful disruption every couple of years, you need to have hundreds of experiments going at any one time.”
Ries: Traditional upfront project management systems are obsolete
“That system of managing work is not a good one for our time. Maybe it was a good, maybe it made sense in a different era, but it really doesn't make sense now, and there is a better way.”
Ries: Lean Startup provides neutral ground across corporate functions
“Lean startup has created a neutral terrain where different functions can come together to do this, and I think there's just a natural resistance to doing a methodology from someone else's function.”
Ries: Entrepreneurial transformation is a management problem, not a technology problem
“This, before it is anything else, is a management issue. It is not a technology issue. It is not a process or tools issue. It is really about how do we manage people. Most companies have all the raw material they need to work in this more entrepreneurial way”
Ries: Customer feature requests are hypotheses, not strict requirements
“The word requirement just does not apply to like a giant worldwide focus group of random things that customers ask for. Those are not requirements. Those are hypotheses. Those are guesses about what customers might want.”
Eric Ries: Multitasking and Siloed Work Kills Organizational Innovation
“No multitasking, no passing work between silos. That is the death of innovation.”
Ries: Shared clear language matters more than official Lean Startup terminology
“What matters is that you have a precise and clear language that you can communicate with your coworkers about. I don't care if you use my language or somebody else's, as long as it has a rigorous foundation.”
Ries: Lean methodology must continuously evolve and obsolete its own prior teachings
“Lean startup stands for what works. So if I said something wrong, if we discover ourselves as a movement, we use our own scientific process to discover new things, they obsolete the old things, and we should always be getting better, and what we wrote five yea…”
Ries: MVPs Maintain Stakeholder Interest Before Hockey-Stick Growth Hits
“So I think of Lean Startup and MVPs in particular as a way to demonstrate progress towards the vision to sustain that interest over time during the long flat part of the hockey stick when the vanity metrics are really low and there isn't Instantaneous, overnig…”
Ries: A pivot is a strategy change without changing the core vision
“The right definition of a pivot is a change in strategy without a change in vision.”