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I'm Eric Ries, author of "The Lean Startup" and new book "Incorruptible" – AMA

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Re: I'm Eric Ries, author of "The Lean Startup" and new book "Incorruptible" – AMA

#171

Post by eries »

ai_slop_hater wrote: post #144
eries wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for saying that. When I wrote that book, people like you were very much in my mind at the time. I'm really glad to hear you found it useful, even if the people around you didn't understand or support what you were trying to do. You're quite right. There are many, many problems with the current "best practices" including that many founders wind up with nothing even if the organization succeeds. In fact, one…

> In fact, one study I cite in the book found that something like 80% of founders of venture-backed companies will no longer be CEO even three years after an IPO. Why? Is there something that inherently prevents founders to remain in control after IPO?

Yes, it's called today's governance "best practices." Many of them are actually quite value-destroying, and founders should run for the hills every time they hear that phrase.

Re: I'm Eric Ries, author of "The Lean Startup" and new book "Incorruptible" – AMA

#172

Post by eries »

nunez wrote: post #138

Hey, Eric! I read Lean Startup many years ago when I was in my "let's do a startup" phase. My idea didn't make it, but I learned a lot and am glad I took the chance. Thanks for the motivation! You said to "Ask You Anything," so here's my question: I have mostly stopped buying from Amazon. That includes books. I'd like to buy your next book. What's the best way to support you if I don't want to purchase through them?…

Luckily, many of us publish in many places other than Amazon, and in fact the best way to support any author is to buy the book from your local independent bookstore. In fact, if you want to do me a big favor, you'll call your local independent bookstore, ask them if they carry the book, and if they don't, berate them for not doing so. But please do it in a polite way. In all seriousness, I actually made a list of bookstores that are selling the book that are not part of the big chains, and you can find all that on my website, incorruptible.co.

Re: I'm Eric Ries, author of "The Lean Startup" and new book "Incorruptible" – AMA

#173

Post by arpinum »

My book arrived today.

Q1: You have done a few friendly interviews on YouTube, but I haven't seen one that challenges you much. Do you know if there are upcoming interviews that you found pushed back?

Q2: Is the idea of shareholder supremacy fundamentally at odds with your with your preferred alternative governance structures, or is it just a time preference and risk attitude issue?

Q3: You will get sympathetic ears easily due to the subject matter. But the same book about non-profits would be a harder sell. Do you agree, and if true does that say something about the marketplace of ideas?

Re: I'm Eric Ries, author of "The Lean Startup" and new book "Incorruptible" – AMA

#174

Post by eries »

lebovic wrote: post #168

I worked at Anthropic, and I wouldn't attribute much to the structure itself – so I'm wary of using it as a positive example here. I do attribute a lot to specific people. Concretely, to much of the intitial team, who they recruited on the research/infra side, and some very close personal relationships within research/infra. That dynamic, paired with their unwillingness to accede to something against their values, is…

Your comment is very astute. A structure is like a shell. It can only protect what is within. It does not cause what's within to be vital, healthy, or unhealthy. But if you think that the courage that Dario has regularly shown would be possible with a conventional "best practices" structure, I think you're kidding yourself.

Re: I'm Eric Ries, author of "The Lean Startup" and new book "Incorruptible" – AMA

#175

Post by eries »

Boxxed wrote: post #110
nradov wrote: post #87

It will be interesting to see how many of those companies remain "incorruptible". Your new book seems a bit like a sequel to Jim Collins's 2001 book Good to Great . Several of the "great" companies including Circuit City, Fannie Mae, and Wells Fargo later ran into serious problems. And from an investor perspective, as a group they have underperformed the S&P 500. https://www.harpercollins.com/products/good-to-great-j…

> And from an investor perspective, as a group they have underperformed the S&P 500. This should be kind of obvious -- if they are avoiding doing awful things in the name of money, then they are leaving something on the table. You can't have your cake and eat it too. This is why the real solution is some kind of governance/regulation, because otherwise the market incentivizes being awful.

I want to appreciate you for this comment, even though I disagree with it, because this is a really articulate version of the conventional wisdom that I think all of us have imbibed since before we could talk.

Re: I'm Eric Ries, author of "The Lean Startup" and new book "Incorruptible" – AMA

#177

Post by eries »

roggenbuck wrote: post #169

Hey Eric! How often do you see companies recover from financial gravity? Or is it mostly irreversible? How much do you attribute worsening of company values to things like professional managers, too much hierarchy, and less founder-mode; versus financial gravity? In a case like GitHub where their focus seems less on open-source these days, should developers try to help GitHub better support open-source or should the…

You've framed this question as if these things are separate phenomena, but from my point of view, they are all symptoms of the same underlying cause. The sad truth is that, as I say in the book, "It's always too early until it's too late." The truth is we don't ever know if something is too late until we try. If you love an organization and you think you have the opportunity to try to help them get better, go for it. If you decide they've abandoned their ethos, I definitely think you should help support and build the alternative.

For reasons I try to explain in the book, open source in particular is an example of the kind of mission-driven positive externality type of business that our modern best practices make it hard for people to see and understand. This is going to be a recurring problem in the free software and open source movements for years to come unless we get smarter about these forces.

Re: I'm Eric Ries, author of "The Lean Startup" and new book "Incorruptible" – AMA

#178

Post by ngriffiths »

My biggest struggle with this question is that "going bad" sometimes coincides with not just financial incentives, but also more people getting value out of it. For example Spotify gradually shifting from "we make it easy to curate and share playlists" to "we make them for you to use as background music constantly." Sometimes what's bad for the early power user is great for the late adopter, and it's difficult to make any kind of broad judgment about whether the change is better or worse.

What do you say to this interpretation? In particular do you think most cases could be framed as "the key audience/customer/market has shifted"? Is it possible to find greater financial success while doing things the primary audience doesn't like?

Re: I'm Eric Ries, author of "The Lean Startup" and new book "Incorruptible" – AMA

#179

Post by eries »

frankest wrote: post #160

I’ve been thinking about what objective harnesses can be put around governance for companies and governments as well. Transparency dashboards, clearer real-time feedback mechanisms. What do you suggest especially for governments (local, or even larger). Keep thinking AI might actually help improve our feedback mechanisms given all the noise.

Yes, I do think this is something that LLMs should be very good at. As I've said in a couple of the comments in the thread, summarizing is LLMs' greatest superpower. But I have a whole chapter in the book about the use of metrics and, of course, their misuse. I'd be very cautious here. Government reformers have often assumed that just having better data will cause agencies to make better decisions, but this is simply not true. The choice about which data to pay attention to, whether to make decisions in a scientific or humane way, are values questions, not just data questions. They require the installation of a specific ethos in the organization to stay true to those values. Without that, more data will not have any effect whatsoever.

Re: I'm Eric Ries, author of "The Lean Startup" and new book "Incorruptible" – AMA

#180

Post by damnitbuilds »

eries wrote: post #163
bilater wrote: post #159

Hey Eric - does it bother you all the startups in your first book you held up as examples are dead?

All of them? Really? What's funny is when the book was published, I remember someone telling me that I should have included more examples of failed startups in the manuscript. I remember answering them, "Oh, I have. We just don't know which ones yet." This is the difficulty of writing any kind of business book. There's just no way to use any company as an example to illustrate some principle without people misunderst…

You should, however, ( assuming your ideas are correct ) be able to look at a company and tell if it is following your ideas or not and will therefore ( assuming your ideas are correct ) be successful or not, and therefore make billions investing.

Have you done that ?

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