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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

#551

Post by zaphar »

wyclif wrote: post #477
zaphar wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The structure requires maintenance and that is done by an individual or individuals. The real reasons a good company stays good is because the leadership stays good. When the leadership begins to disengage or leaves or changes in some way then the structure will begin to break down. You can't fix it with a "better" structure. It will decay over time unless someone is actively maintaining it.

Zaphod, is that you??? In all seriousness, yes, individual leadership at the top has to be willing to steelman controversial issues and potential changes of direction, as well engage in unapologetic gatekeeping. At this point we've seen this over and over in tech when observing corporate successes and failures.

yes

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

#552

Post by mentalgear »

> Mondragon, the Basque worker cooperative network founded by a Catholic priest after the Spanish Civil War, employs 90,000 people and is one of Spain's largest companies, spanning industrial equipment and grocery retail. Internally it is a network of roughly 80 to 90 independent cooperatives that self-govern through a congress of representatives. Ries uses it as a data point rather than a template: collectively, what he calls "alternative structures" (cooperatives, mutual ownership models, long-term benefit trusts) control roughly 5% of world GDP. His point is that most founders have never been given permission to even consider these options, not that every founder should replicate Mondragon.

> When founders raise the idea of mission-protective governance structures early, lawyers and bankers typically tell them it's too soon. Then, by the time it matters, the control has already shifted. Ries has watched this play out repeatedly, including once in a room where a CEO turned to their CFO, GC, and bankers and asked whatever happened to that mission-protective provision thing — only to be told it was now too late.

Exemplary for how Big Finance tries to keep the levers of powers in the hands of a tiny sliver of elites.

https://www.tbpndigest.com/story/2026-05-26/eric-ries-on-inc...

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

#553

Post by mannanj »

eries wrote: post #351
mannanj wrote: post #248

Hi Eric. In this day and age, and in the next year or two, what do you foresee as the most practical first steps for someone to work towards delivering a startup for income they can sustain themselves on? And how has the traditional loop of validation, delivering and iterating on products, and getting your first paid customers changed since fast output is now possible with AI and technology? Please structure this for…

This is kind of a big and deep question, more than I can get into with so many other questions pending, but let me see what I can offer. First of all, we are living through a golden age of entrepreneurship. Unfortunately, because times of tremendous turmoil are often times of tremendous startup opportunity. But in particular, this moment, the capabilities of individual people are being amplified thanks to all these n…

It was a lot, I see that now. I appreciate you responding anyway! Thank you for the words of encouragement.

Personally, I think my challenge is less on starting, and more on finishing, and on the pieces of extending it from personal project to something others use and pay for. A bootcamp I did inspired by your methodology was still running on old paradigm and had us doing a lot of validation before building a thing; it didn't make sense when I can quickly development and produce with AI.

Would love to hear more if you would speak to that and I can clarify and focus my question(s) later. Thank you so much.

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

#554

Post by creamyhorror »

eries wrote: post #136
creamyhorror wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that incredible sense of idealism The idealism that has been sucked out of the tech industry. It was so (naively) hopeful at one point, and now the arms race and profit-maximization has eroded it all. Your observations really resonate with me. I'm surprised I hadn't heard of the Long-Term Stock Exchange, it seems like a much healthier direction for the market.

You might want to ask yourself why, in all these years, you haven't heard of it. There's quite a few people invested in keeping it that way.

Touche. Honestly, if there's going to be speculative fever in society that you can't suppress, it should be captured for better purposes, such as through your LTSE. Bring access to it to Asia sometime.

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

#555

Post by eej71 »

eries wrote: post #136
creamyhorror wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that incredible sense of idealism The idealism that has been sucked out of the tech industry. It was so (naively) hopeful at one point, and now the arms race and profit-maximization has eroded it all. Your observations really resonate with me. I'm surprised I hadn't heard of the Long-Term Stock Exchange, it seems like a much healthier direction for the market.

You might want to ask yourself why, in all these years, you haven't heard of it. There's quite a few people invested in keeping it that way.

I think there is large gap between what you think LTSE is - and what it actually is. And yes, I know its your baby.

Its similar to the kind of gap that exists within the minds of what people want ESG to be - and what it actually is.

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

#556

Post by jkingsbery »

eries wrote: post #490
jkingsbery wrote: post #468

Not a question, just thought I'd throw out that I worked through Black Art of Java Game Programming when I was learning Java in 1997 or so. I still have my copy because I don't like getting rid of books. I found it really helpful for learning patterns for building medium sized software projects. I hadn't realized that you wrote that until years later when you mentioned something about it in The Startup Way.

No way! I would absolutely love to hear what you thought of that book. In fact, you may be the first person I've ever interacted with who actually read it!

I was in middle school at the time, learning programming. I think by that time, we had home Internet, but it was really slow, and so a lot of my learning about programming was either from the help files that came with the IDE (at the time for me learning Java, that meant Microsoft Visual J++) from books I convinced my dad to get me from Barnes and Noble as a reward for doing the "important" summer reading. I had a couple Java books before, but they were more focused on the mechanics of the language. Your book was the first that talked about how to put together a system.

As a specific example, I had never been exposed to much in the way of networking concepts before. Black Art has a chapter in adding networking functionality to a game which was my introduction to networking concepts and how to build networking software. Until much later when I learned about higher-level frameworks, I used the design patterns for network programming in several projects in school over the next several years.

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

#557

Post by unholiness »

clarkdale wrote: post #383
eries wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This reply genuinely reads like AI and I don't mean to insult you. Perhaps large language models have been trained too much on your books. Your first 2 to 3ish paragraph (explanation and rephrasing) is very characteristic of an AI when they're pressed (e.g. on why they recently hallucinated).

> Your first 2 to 3ish paragraph (explanation and rephrasing) is very characteristic of an AI

What you're seeing in those paragraphs is patience and empathy. Let's not let LLMs have a monopoly on these.

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

#558

Post by snapetom »

eries wrote: post #338
snapetom wrote: post #264

Costco is interesting. I've always find it an interesting dichotomy between their public image, retail worker reputation, and corporate reputation. The former two are fantastic. I live in Seattle metro area where they are headquartered, and the last is horrible. I've had more than one recruiter tell me it's a classic, blue collar, "we've always done it this way" environment since many of their corporate people rose t…

I definitely don't want to paint Costco as perfect. It wouldn't surprise me at all if their ethos is not especially attractive to people who want to work on the tech side of their business. I can easily imagine that at some point that is going to cause some kind of problem for them. But I can also imagine that it's just a very distinctive culture that's not for everybody. The truth is, I don't really know because I'v…

Yep. Along with your other comment, I also think they're too big to be messed with for now. Last company I was at maybe serves as predictions of what's to come.

It's also blue collar tech, thirty years old, was the first or second player in the market. It fell behind quickly, but served a niche. The market completely changed on them in the last 15 years or so, lots driven by private equity. The company never changed. Customers kept telling them the old "hookers and blow" sales pitches (literally) isn't going to win renewals and new customers, but they never listened, never fixed things. Now the new PE owners don't know what to do with this boondoggle that never made money.

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

#559

Post by unholiness »

wavemode wrote: post #542
laszlojamf wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

gotta love HN. Top comment on an AMA with an author who's actually written books is "Here is a book you should read".

Gotta love HN. A commenter does literally nothing other than recommend a book and the top reply is "don't recommend books to him - he's written books, don't you know that?"

TBF I think it's just a remark on the upvotes. It's a perfectly cromulent comment with no business being at the top of an AMA.

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

#560

Post by aklemm »

laszlojamf wrote: post #504
IIAOPSW wrote: post #474

I'll give you a read. If you haven't read it already, I strongly recommend the Knapp Commission Report. Its about police corruption in New York City in 1972, but its lessons on systemic and institutionalized corruption are highly transferable to other contexts. Probably the most common naive mistake I see is people thinking their subfield is special and they are the first to really notice / understand fraud within it…

gotta love HN. Top comment on an AMA with an author who's actually written books is "Here is a book you should read".

Right, and it's quite possibly not even very relevant to the book.
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