Eric Ries
Founder & CEO, Long-Term Stock Exchange. On 10 shows, 11 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
authorfounderexecutivehost@ericries ↗LinkedIn ↗theleanstartup.com ↗Wikipedia ↗
Eric Ries is an entrepreneur and author best known for pioneering the Lean Startup methodology and writing The Lean Startup. He is the founder of the Long-Term Stock Exchange and co-founder of Answer.AI.
10shows
11appearances
219statements
52resolved
37supported
4contradicted
71%fully supported
61said about them ↓ Everything Eric Ries said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Ries: The most consequential organizational decisions happen without managers present
“As a leader, you have to understand that the most consequential decisions that will affect any organization's life are almost by definition made when no manager is present.”
Eric Ries: AI systems cannot reliably fact-check long documents
“Fact checking a long document is still well outside the capabilities of most AI systems because, you know, for the attention reasons, but if you're working in sections, it's really easy to be like, while I'm here,”
Eric Ries reveals upcoming unannounced book titled The Incorruptible
“I'm working on a new book. It's not announced yet. So don't look too, too closely what this is, but the book is called the incorruptible. It'll come out next year.”
Ries: Corporate venture capital is far more involved in AI than past eras
“You see a lot more involvement of corporate venture firms which
You didn't see before.”
Ries: Building AI wrapper startups provides immense career equity for young founders
“And especially for younger indie hackers, I know a lot of like, a lot of these projects are run by college students, by recent graduates, people trying to break into the industry, and their career equity upside in having done a cool thing is so much more valua…”
Ries: AI lets non-tech businesses bypass the SaaS deployment era entirely
“Once you know the technology well enough to be able to predict the effects it will have on a given business, then it's just very clear that we're living in a time of tremendous arbitrage where tech non-enabled businesses can become quickly AI-enabled. Skip, in…”
Eric Ries: Acquisition roll-ups fail without genuine customer understanding
“What you cannot buy is understanding of the customer. So all of these roll-up strategies all depend on somebody somewhere in the management of the new thing, actually understanding the business at the level of the customer and what they actually need.”
Ries: AI accountability bots will become a huge category as AI improves
“This kind of thing is going to be a huge category as the AI gets better.”
Eric Ries: Corporate governance questions have become acute for AI companies
“And it turns out that those questions have just become like really acute for AI companies. So, so because of my work on governance, I wound up meeting with and getting to work with some of the top AI companies.”
Ries: IMVU shipped product 50 times a day on average
“We at IMV, we ship product 50 times a day on average at a time when people were like lucky to be doing it monthly if they were really advanced.”
Ries: A pivot means changing strategy while preserving the vision
“That is what it's called when you change the strategy, but try to have Fidelity to the vision that we, it needs a name because we do it all the time.”
Ries: Lean Startup is empirical and must adopt whatever works
“It's a scientific theory, which means that, that whatever works is lean startup. So if someone comes up with something new and it works, we can't be threatened and upset about it. We have to adopt it.”
Eric Ries: Lean Startup does not mean being cheap or skipping fundraising
“Top misconceptions about lean startup. And it was like, number one, lean means cheap. So you're doing lean startup. It means you're not raising money. It's like, that's not true.”
Ries: First-time founders are usually stubborn about testing core hypotheses
“First time founders especially are usually very stubborn about this and they don't want to do it. It's like, look, you tell me what you believe. I don't have to be right. And I want to just double check that you're right. What, by however we do it.”
Ries: Difficulty scoping MVPs stems from founders refusing to admit unknowns
“The thing I learned is that if people are having trouble coming with MVP, the problem is usually upstream in the chain of deductive reasoning from the vision down to the MVP. It's like usually people are just not super clear on what do I want to learn, and it'…”
Ries: Founders who psychologically cannot admit failure cannot learn
“The number one lesson of the scientific method is if you can't fail, you can't learn. And so if you set yourself up in a position where psychologically you can't admit that something didn't work, you can't learn.”
Ries: Founders fail when using craft to avoid customer feedback
“Where people get into trouble, I think, is when they want to use craft as an excuse to not get any feedback.”
Ries: Being trapped in a zombie company is worse than startup failure
“Far worse is to be in a company that won't die, a zombie undead company that you hate, but you can't leave.”
Ries: Startup vision is usually discovered through building rather than preselected
“Oftentimes the vision is discovered more than chosen in these stories.”
Ries: Real pivots retain a critical insight, not a complete restart
“If it was truly a complete shutdown, start over again, nobody and nothing in common. I was like, that is not a pivot. But that's just actually quite rare. Usually there's some critical insight or element of the first thing that is carried over into the second …”
Ries: Under AI uncertainty, take actions ethical across multiple future scenarios
“The thing that makes sense is to pick actions today that make ethical sense in a wide variety of future scenarios. And do those.”
Ries: Inbound channels will saturate with AI emails, forcing AI filtering
“All of our communication channels are about to be super saturated with AI generated experimentation, you know, like whether we want it to or not. And so if you think, if you just extrapolate a little bit, if this technology holds the way we think it will, it's…”
The other half of the tape: Eric Ries's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 58 times in 34 episodes across the shows. 3 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 7Rob Walling 6Garry Tan 6Scott Cooper 5Jeremy Howard 5Greg Isenberg 5Mike Maples, Jr. 4Alistair Croll 3
Statements about Eric Ries, by other people (3)
Isenberg: Lean Startup landing page validation no longer works in AI era
“The lean startup by Eric Ries talks about how you don't need to actually build anything. You can put a landing page, you can send traffic to it. And based on that, you know, you can figure out what to build. I don't think that works anymore. I think that it's …”
Kupor: Eric Ries is collaborating with policymakers on Long Term Stock Exchange
“Eric is working with a lot of folks in DC to think about this concept of, he calls it the long-term stock exchange, but again, similar idea, which is how do we incent both management teams and employees, as well as incent shareholders to kind of think longer t…”
Andreessen recommends 'Lean Startup', 'Hard Thing About Hard Things', 'Zero to One'
“The Lean Startup book by Eric Reese is very, very good and that book should be read front to back. Second is, ah, Ben Horowitz's book, The Hard Thing About Hard Things, I can't recommend too highly. And the third is Peter Thiel just wrote a book called Zero to…”
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
20VC 21
Startups For the Rest of Us 8
the a16z Podcast 7
Lenny's Podcast 5
Latent Space 5
the Startup Ideas Podcast 5
Capital Allocators 4
the Y Combinator Startup Podcast 3
2026 4 mentions in 3 episodes 1 per episode
2025 6 mentions in 4 episodes 2 per episode
2024 14 mentions in 5 episodes 3 per episode
- Answer.ai & AI Magic with Jeremy Howard
- Mike Maples Jr. - Identifying Startup Pattern Breakers (EP.406)
- Just evil enough: Subversive marketing strategies for startups | Alistair Croll
- Episode 700 | Playing the Long Game
- $1M Startup Trends For 2024, With Michael Karnjanaprakorn
- every mention in 2024, scene by scene →
2023 3 mentions in 3 episodes 1 per episode
2022 1 mention in 1 episode
2021 1 mention in 1 episode
2020 3 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
- 20VC: Floodgate's Mike Maples on 3 Key Breakthroughs Startups Experience in Success, The Rise of Angel and Operator Funds, Multi-Stage Funds Re-Entering Seed Investing and The Insight Development Framework
- Episode 496 | " The Press Cover Expectations. Don't Compare Yourself to Slack or Zoom"
- every mention in 2020, scene by scene →
2019 6 mentions in 3 episodes 2 per episode
2018 2 mentions in 2 episodes 1 per episode
- 20VC: The Core Lessons From Building a 150 Startup Angel Portfolio, Why Founders Who Angel Invest Have Such Strong Advantages and Why The Lean Startup Makes Less and Less Sense Today with Adrian Aoun, Founder & CEO @ Forward
- 20VC: Why The Current Crop Of VC Does Not Understand Design, Why Product Market Fit Is A Liquid Not A Solid & How Graduates Can Optimise Their Career for Personal Development with Steve Vassallo, General Partner @ Foundation Capital
- every mention in 2018, scene by scene →
2017 8 mentions in 5 episodes 2 per episode
- 20VC: eShares' Henry Ward on Why Portfolio Theory Is Wrong? Why Investors Will Never Take Market Risk & Why You have To Have A Line of Sight To A $Bn Outcome
- 20VC: Oren Zeev on Why Diversification Does Not Work, Thesis Based Investing Is Sceptical & Partners Mostly Stay Together For LPs
- 20VC: What Is Core To The Best Investor - Founder Relationships, The Biggest Risk For Founders In The Early Days & Why EQ Is The Most Important Trait For Managers with Jack Altman, Founder & CEO @ Lattice
- Your Whole Goal Is to Not Quit - Courtland Allen of Indie Hackers · Y Combinator
- How Should Business Schools Prepare Students for Startups? – Jeff Bussgang and Michael Seibel · Y Combinator
- every mention in 2017, scene by scene →
2016 8 mentions in 3 episodes 3 per episode
- 20VC: Garry Tan on The Biggest Takeaways From Advising 700 Companies @ Y Combinator & Why Now Is The Golden Age For The Early Stage?
- 20VC: Why The Best CEO's Are The Best Capital Allocators, How You Can Build A Business In A Space You Are Not Passionate About & When Is The Right Time To Put The Pedal To The Metal with Josh Hannah, General Partner @ Matrix Ventures
- 20VC: The 4 Required Powers For A Startup To Be A $500m Business with "The Most Powerful Woman in Startups", Ann Miura Ko, Co-Founder @ Floodgate
- every mention in 2016, scene by scene →
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Eric's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LENNY'S PODCASTLEDGER | Founder & CEO, Long-Term Stock Exchange | 2 | 70 | 62% 13/21 | full record on Lenny's Podcast → |
| a16zLEDGER | Founder & CEO, Long-Term Stock Exchange | 1 | 34 | 50% 1/2 | full record on the a16z Podcast → |
| Y COMBINATORLEDGER | Founder & CEO, Long-Term Stock Exchange | 1 | 23 | 60% 6/10 | full record on the Y Combinator Startup Podcast → |
| CAPITAL ALLOCATORSLEDGER | Founder & CEO, Long-Term Stock Exchange | 1 | 21 | 100% 1/1 | full record on Capital Allocators → |
 MIXERGYLEDGER | Founder & CEO, Long-Term Stock Exchange | 1 | 18 | 100% 6/6 | full record on Mixergy → |
| STARTUP IDEASLEDGER | Founder & CEO, Long-Term Stock Exchange | 1 | 17 | 67% 2/3 | full record on the Startup Ideas Podcast → |
 TBPNLEDGER | Founder & CEO, Long-Term Stock Exchange | 1 | 13 | 100% 4/4 | full record on TBPN → |
| STARTUPS FOR THE REST OF USLEDGER | Founder & CEO, Long-Term Stock Exchange | 1 | 10 | 100% 3/3 | full record on Startups For the Rest of Us → |
| 20VCLEDGER | Founder & CEO, Long-Term Stock Exchange | 1 | 9 | 50% 1/2 | full record on 20VC → |
| LATENT SPACELEDGER | Founder & CEO, Long-Term Stock Exchange | 1 | 4 | — | full record on Latent Space → |