I'm a huge fan, Eric! Thank you for doing this. My question is of a more personal nature. When you were in your mid-20s, what were your career goals? Have they changed (if so, how drastically)?
I Am Eric Ries, Author of the Lean Startup. AMA
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Re: I Am Eric Ries, Author of the Lean Startup. AMA
#12What books do you recommend, for people who are very new to entrepreneurship and stratups?
TBH, don't read books, go start something. Then, when you're totally baffled by what's happening, use books to try and understand why.
Now, since you're probably not going to take my advice, I think a new book that you'll find helpful would be Startup Opportunities https://www.amazon.com/Startup-Opportunities-Know-When-Quit/...
I also recently curated a list of classic startup books on Product Hunt: http://www.producthunt.com/ericries/collections/classic-star...
Re: I Am Eric Ries, Author of the Lean Startup. AMA
#13What books do you recommend, for people who are very new to entrepreneurship and stratups?
TBH, don't read books, go start something. Then, when you're totally baffled by what's happening, use books to try and understand why. Now, since you're probably not going to take my advice, I think a new book that you'll find helpful would be Startup Opportunities https://www.amazon.com/Startup-Opportunities-Know-When-Quit/... I also recently curated a list of classic startup books on Product Hunt: http://www.produc…
I just looked at the collection and realized Founders at Work isn't in there, which is an oversight.
Re: I Am Eric Ries, Author of the Lean Startup. AMA
#14I understand and appreciate your approach that the best way to work on growth-engine-topics using lean startup way is by utilising fully dedicated teams in sandboxes. But if you were working for a corporate-client (as a methodology-champion), who is not in the position to assign even one dedicated team yet (instead: 14 volunteers (working in their normal full-day job) distributed across 5 sandboxes), how would you fa…
Well the first thing to think about is: are you in a position to tell your client the truth, which is that this is not going to work. A giant part-time committee isn't going to accomplish this kind of work.
If you can tell the truth, try to win the argument now, before it's too late.
But not everyone is so lucky. If for whatever reason, you can't tell the client the truth, you're not totally doomed. What I would look for is an opportunity to make a trade with the various middle managers involved in this situation. Try to ask for fewer, but more dedicated, resources. In most corporate situations, nobody ever asks for less money, smaller teams, less authority. But you'd rather have a dedicated team of 5 than 14 volunteers.
Re: I Am Eric Ries, Author of the Lean Startup. AMA
#15I'm a huge fan, Eric! Thank you for doing this. My question is of a more personal nature. When you were in your mid-20s, what were your career goals? Have they changed (if so, how drastically)?
Drastically is an understatement! I was 25 when I co-founded IMVU. My goals at that time were to become an excellent technical founder, CTO, and maybe even a startup CEO someday.
Looking back, I think if YC had existed, I almost certainly would have applied. But nothing like that existed back then and so I wound up making my own mistakes and then writing about them.
Re: I Am Eric Ries, Author of the Lean Startup. AMA
#16What books do you recommend, for people who are very new to entrepreneurship and stratups?
TBH, don't read books, go start something. Then, when you're totally baffled by what's happening, use books to try and understand why. Now, since you're probably not going to take my advice, I think a new book that you'll find helpful would be Startup Opportunities https://www.amazon.com/Startup-Opportunities-Know-When-Quit/... I also recently curated a list of classic startup books on Product Hunt: http://www.produc…
Thanks a lot Eric, I will surely take your first advise (with a small deviation), in fact I read a lot and sometimes feel overloaded with information and not knowing what to do with it. I guess I'll restrict my reading time to 15-20 minutes a day apart from the reading I have to do while researching on a particular problem. I guess this would be right for me.
Re: I Am Eric Ries, Author of the Lean Startup. AMA
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
When I was working on IMVU, we almost killed ourselves launching in only six months. At the time, we thought that was pretty impressive because our previous startup had taken almost 5 years. But by today's standards, we were incredibly slow. This may sound pedantic, but it kind of depends on what you mean by "launch" and what you mean by "startup." If you take something like CapTable.io, it only took a few weeks to g…
I was talking about time to paying customers. Your distinction isn't pedantic at all - there's a big difference between something that requires physical R&D & a services platform. I'm doing biotech & I think 6 mo is incredibly fast.
Of course. The key is to learn as quickly as possible within the constraints of the medium you're working in. I've worked with startups that launched an MVP in days for $10 and ones that have spent more than a year and $10M+ to make the MVP.
But here's a spooky though I'll leave you with. Often times, when startups are looking at their tools they will say: given the tools I have, the fastest I can build an MVP is X. But if you really take the criticality of learning seriously, you might say: given my desire to learn quickly, what tools can I use to go faster?
And that's where a lot of breakthroughs happen, when you choose tools and platforms not based solely on their technical capabilities, but by their speed of iteration. (It's probably why Facebook was built on PHP.)
Re: I Am Eric Ries, Author of the Lean Startup. AMA
#18Hi Eric, our startup is hosting live video AMAs with entrepreneurs. Would you be interested in hosting a session at http://talkingnext.io/? We actually have an event scheduled for tonight with Raj Singh from Dronecast at 5PM EST if you want to check it out live.
Re: I Am Eric Ries, Author of the Lean Startup. AMA
#19I understand and appreciate your approach that the best way to work on growth-engine-topics using lean startup way is by utilising fully dedicated teams in sandboxes. But if you were working for a corporate-client (as a methodology-champion), who is not in the position to assign even one dedicated team yet (instead: 14 volunteers (working in their normal full-day job) distributed across 5 sandboxes), how would you fa…
Well the first thing to think about is: are you in a position to tell your client the truth, which is that this is not going to work. A giant part-time committee isn't going to accomplish this kind of work. If you can tell the truth, try to win the argument now, before it's too late. But not everyone is so lucky. If for whatever reason, you can't tell the client the truth, you're not totally doomed. What I would look…
Thank you very much for this advice. Until I can play this card how I act currently as methodology-champion is that I pre-think/pre-work/"pre-cook" every working step for every sandbox-team. So the volunteers do not need to start from zero - they get everything prepared, comment it and thus can get good quality results out of their work - even on a slow pace do to long intervals between meetings. What do you think about this? Can this work for the first BML-feedback loop per sandbox?
Re: I Am Eric Ries, Author of the Lean Startup. AMA
#20Hi Eric, our startup is hosting live video AMAs with entrepreneurs. Would you be interested in hosting a session at http://talkingnext.io/ ? We actually have an event scheduled for tonight with Raj Singh from Dronecast at 5PM EST if you want to check it out live.
Sounds cool. Email me (it's right on my blog).