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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

#301

Post by eries »

FiatLuxDave wrote: post #205

Hi Eric, I enjoyed The Lean Startup. You used the phrase "our industry". Personally, I'm not a huge fan of the 'tech industry' concept, simply because a lot of startups are not in software/computing, and a lot of new technology isn't either. But I get what people mean. I notice that the companies you mention like Costco and Patagonia are not in the tech industry. Does your new book have any examples which show how to…

Yeah, I did my best in the book to find that balance between tech and non-tech stories. You'll find a few tech stories in there, for example Anthropic, GitLab and Cloudflare. And if you want all the horror stories, you can read Cory Doctorow.

I wanted to have a wide variety of stories in the book from many different industries to show just how pervasive these forces are that we're doing battle against. While there are some things that are unique to the tech industry, I think we have more in common than what sets us apart.

FWIW, I wish people would talk about the "startup movement" rather than the "tech industry" for what we do. But maybe that ship has sailed.

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

#302

Post by eries »

kva wrote: post #289

The lean startup methodology is fundamentally antithetical to companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, Antares, etc. How do you resolve the difference between the short term nature of the lean startup, and the long term optimistic nature of LTSE?

I'm not sure I would group all those companies in with each other, and if you read the book, you'll see that I attempted to make at least one important distinction among them.

And it's interesting that people see Lean Startup as short-term; that's really not what's in the book. I tried really hard to make clear that you need a foundation of long-term thinking in order to make any kind of rapid iteration system, whether that's Lean Startup or Lean manufacturing, work. By the way, this is an old finding that shows up in a lot of the management literature going back to the people who originally studied the Toyota Production System.

But all that said, I'm really glad that you feel LTSE embodies a long-term optimistic view of the future. That was absolutely my goal in starting it.

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

#304

Post by eries »

sdellis wrote: post #191
eries wrote: post #3

For those that want to go deeper with _Incorruptible_, I've spent the past few months doing hundreds of interviews and events discussing its various themes and topics. I'm having Claude Code summarize this progress along the way at https://howisincorruptiblegoing.com/ You can also see the various accolades, reviews, and awards that it's accumulated so far.

I agree with your premise that the unethical behavior in the markets is structural. I also commend your work on this book. The creation of the LTSE is also a huge and laudable accomplishment. Kudos! However, I have to express some skepticism that through regulations and reforms, we can reverse the entire incentive structure for public investment to be aligned with stewardship rather than extraction. How do you plan t…

Ah! Your point about Claude Code is very funny. At a minimum, you can find links to many of the interviews I've done. If it comes across as too promotional, you can always use the "official" website incorruptible.co which is more staid.

Your skepticism is well earned, and all I can really say is that I hope you'll read the book and judge for yourself. I tried really hard to lay out the evidence for two things that are necessary to address this skepticism:

1. We have to see that these structures are changeable. The economy that our grandparents inhabited is almost unrecognizably different than the one we inhabit today. So too, we can imagine that the economy that our grandchildren will work in may be unrecognizably different to us. Why does that necessarily have to be in a negative direction? What was once changed by human hands can be changed again.

2. I know this is hard to believe, but there's actually a lot of evidence that mission-driven, purpose-driven, trustworthy organizations outperform their conventional counterparts. The fact that this is so gives us a lot of tools we can use to drive the change we want to see.

On top of all that, we are living through a massive generational shift. The new generations have lived their whole lives under this maligned structure, and they are sick and tired of it. If you think they are going to sit quietly by and allow those structures to persist, I think that is very unlikely. Which means we're going to have change one way or the other; the only question is how violent and difficult is that revolution going to be? We'd be much better served to change proactively because we know what the right thing is.

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

#306

Post by eries »

jgafni wrote: post #295

I've read the Lean Startup several times, and I'm a huge fan. Have been wondering this over the past year: Has the notion of MVP changed at all, given more experienced or knowledgable customers, higher expectations, AI decreasing costs, and more saturated markets? Seems like what you could get away with 15 years ago might not fly with customers today

Absolutely. 100% true. But on the other hand, the tools have gotten a lot better, so it's much easier to build a high-quality MVP than it was back then. But in any era, the most important thing to remember is that quality is defined by the customer. Meaning, if you don't know who the customer is, you literally don't know what quality means. So don't fall into the trap of assuming you know what would fly or would not fly with customers today. Test. Experiment. Learn.

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

#307

Post by lesinski »

eries wrote: post #167
lesinski wrote: post #66

A lot of big organizations have absorbed a Lean Startup POV -- don't debate, just ship an MVP and measure. But in practice, we're usually measuring a proxy metric, it's a short-term test, the audience may be unrepresentative and because of all this, the result doesn't generalize. What do you think an experiment needs before it can actually be called learning? And what kinds of product questions should not be done as…

There's a whole chapter on this question in the new book, so I won't try to summarize it here, but just encourage you to check it out.

Amazing! I will check it out. Thanks Eric.

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

#308

Post by minkzilla »

eries wrote: post #161
minkzilla wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The parent comment didn’t say anything about size or wall street. It said leadership is what has preserved it. Which it doesn’t seem you have refuted in any meaningful way. You just restated what the parent comment is responding to with no further reasoning as to why leadership doesn’t account for it.

I honestly don't understand your comment, so let me try and recapitulate what I think you're saying and what I think I was saying, and then you can tell me where I missed the mark. What I hear you saying is that the original comment simply said that leadership by itself is enough to preserve the Costco ethos. It didn't say anything about size or Wall Street or anything else. Is that right? The reason I responded the…

Thanks for responding, I do think you interpreted my comment correctly.

I see size as negatively correlated (maybe as a semi-direct cause) with preserving company mission. Hence why I was confused by you addressing it. It would never cross my mind to argue that size has protected Costco.

I haven’t read your book, just skimmed the post so I don’t know if it’s convincing. But I’d like to argue that those companies failing their mission is proof that they did not have good leadership. however, that makes the argument a little circular.

I’m aware of FedMart (Acquired podcast on Costco is very entertaining). I think Sol Price was a bad leader and selling out to Hugo Mann was putting profit above other things.

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

#309

Post by eries »

cube00 wrote: post #300

Can't say I agree with Costco anymore, staff are now rude and needlessly petty at multiple locations which I can only assume is because they're getting squeezed from the top in a similar way to the grocery stores. It used to feel completely different a decade ago, no teenagers that couldn't care less, now few of them seem to care. Tyre centre moved to bookings only but you can't call because there's never anyone on t…

I never said they were perfect! Only that they have maintained their autonomy for 40 years.

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

#310

Post by eries »

otterdude wrote: post #292

How would you expect this dynamic to change considering potentially "consistent" actors in AI / Automation? How do you imagine companies with staying power will be shaped in the future? Will we see new paradigms in management? ie smaller teams, jack of all trade types of individuals vs specialists, potentially the elimination of middle management all together

yes, certainly. There's a section in the bonus content of the book about Answer.AI and how we have attempted to use LLMs to create a company of "management without managers" and how it's going.
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