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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

#71

Post by volandovengo »

Thanks Eric - been a fan of your work for years! I remember Steve Blank bragging in his early courses that you evangelized his work to the masses. I applaud writing a book on the challenges of making a business that is net good for society. I've personally found that there are just so many forces pushing towards the status quo (make more $$), that it's really hard to create a company that prioritizes public good.

How much do you blame our values of our society for creating corrupt businesses? Are corrupt businesses just a mirror of our own values?

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

#74

Post by Ozzie_osman »

Just dropping in to thank you for writing this book and raising awareness around it. A lot of builders are really disillusioned by how "corruptible" the tech industry has been.

I wrote a blog post called "Revenue Model is More Important than Culture" (it made the #1 spot on HackerNews a few years ago) arguing that the way to avoid that corruption is by making sure the business model is immune to it, but having read your thoughts, I'd say your argument (structure being the dominant term) is even stronger.

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

#75

Post by elevation »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #35

> how a handful of companies (like Costco[..]) have successfully been structured to resist gravity "I came to (Jim Sinegal) once and I said, ‘Jim, we can’t sell this hot dog for a buck fifty," Jelineck recalled[..]. "We are losing our rear ends.’ And he said, ‘If you raise the effing hot dog, I will kill you." That's not structure, that's leadership. They were about to change the price, but one guy at the top with au…

> That's not structure, that's leadership. [...] one guy at the top [...] said no.

Yeah, there's no rule structure that can't be skirted and subverted by new owners with different objectives. The most resilient way to preserve your values is to:

    Only take care, and keep your soul diligently, 
    lest you forget the things your eyes have seen, 
    and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life.
    
    Teach them to your children and to your children's children.
Your successors don't need to be your literal children, but if you turn your company over to "strangers with money" you can't be surprised when they do what they want with their new possession.

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

#77

Post by creamyhorror »

eries wrote: post #31
m_a_g wrote: post #23

Any examples of corrupted companies that you’d like to share? I’m especially curious about your thoughts on Meta and Google, the biggest startups of their time and how they evolved.

I write about both companies (briefly) in the book. I've noticed in the comments I get from readers that people still feel very tenderly towards Google, remembering that incredible sense of idealism they instilled in so many of us when they went public. So I had to be very careful what I wrote about Google; I actually mostly left the critique to ex-Google employees, by quoting a dataset of people who had been at Goog…

> 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.

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

#78

Post by jojopinli »

hmokiguess wrote: post #36

I've read The Lean Startup during undergrad and it was a bible to me at the time, thank you for your work, you got me into startup culture in a place where everyone else did not support of it. One question I have for you is on finances, I think that still remains an afterthought in startup hustle culture, and perhaps even by design, I feel like the system is designed so that VCs keep winning and founders rarely get t…

When starting a company, perhaps it’s best to consider something you love doing so much that staying there and nurturing the business is more important than exiting.

That and, don’t accept money from strangers. :)

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

#79

Post by throwaway132448 »

eries wrote: post #24
officialchicken wrote: post #19

How are corruption and enshittification related?

I didn't want to be seen as trying to co-opt Cory's thesis or (very memorable) phrase. His critique is more focused on the tech industry and its particular illness at this time. I wanted a word that was much broader, capturing how this tech behavior is one symptom of a larger illness that has been afflicting our economy for some time. So I settled on the old-fashioned term "corruption"

Do you not think using a word in this way undermines its actual meaning?
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