Eric Ries

Eric Ries
Born (1978-09-22) September 22, 1978
Nationality American
Education Yale University
Occupation Entrepreneur, blogger, author

Eric Ries (born September 22, 1978) is an American entrepreneur, blogger, and author of The Lean Startup, a book on the lean startup movement. He is also the author of The Startup Way, a book on modern entrepreneurial management.

Early life

While at Yale, he was co-founder of Catalyst Recruiting, an online forum for university students to network with potential employers; [1] .[2] He took a leave of absence to pursue Catalyst Recruiting, but the company soon folded.[1]

Career

IMVU

After graduating, Ries moved to Silicon Valley in 2001 as a software engineer with There, Inc.[1] He worked with the firm until the 2003 launch of its web-based 3D Virtual World product, There.com.[1] The company soon failed[1]

In 2004, Ries left to join one of the founders of There.com, Will Harvey in co-founding IMVU Inc.[3], a social network.[4] IMVU investor Steve Blank, who insisted that IMVU executives audit his class on entrepreneurship at UC Berkeley.[5] There he picked up Blank's method of fast customer feedback, which Blank called "Customer Development", and applied it at IMVU, testing alternate versions of the product and measuring download rates.[5] IMVU deployed code to production nearly 50 times a day, an unusually rapid development cycle.[2][6]

IMVU aimed to integrate instant messaging with the high revenue per customer of traditional video games.[3] Ries and Harvey did not seek a large amount of initial funding and released a minimum viable product[7] within six months.[3] In 2006, the firm raised $1 million in its first round of venture fundraising from the Seraph Group, eventually raising an additional 18 million.[8] In 2008 after a new CEO joined IMVU, Ries stepped down as CTO, remaining as a Board Observer.[9][10][11]

Lean startup

After leaving IMVU, Ries joined venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins as a venture advisor, and six months later started advising startups independently.[5] Based on his experiences, he developed a methodology based on select management principles to help startups succeed.[10] The Lean Startup philosophy originates from the Japanese concept of lean manufacturing, which seeks to increase value-creating practices and eliminate wasteful practices.[12] [3][13]

In 2011, Ries began to document his philosophy on his blog with a post titled "The lean startup."[2]

He was invited to speak at the Web 2.0 Expo by Tim O'Reilly, and was offered a position as entrepreneur-in-residence at Harvard Business School.[5] Ries began to devote all of his time to The Lean Startup project, and held conferences, gave talks, wrote blog entries, and served as an advisor to companies.[9][13]

In 2015, he released The Leader's Guide, a self-published version of the curriculum used in his consulting work, exclusively through Kickstarter, raising $588,903 for its publication.[14][15] In October 2017, he released a follow-up, The Startup Way (Currency, Penguin Random House)[16] which shows the application of Lean in larger, corporate environments.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Venture Capital: Eric Ries, author of "The Lean Startup". YouTube. November 21, 2009.
  2. 1 2 3 Loizos, Connie. “Lean Startup” evangelist Eric Ries is just getting started. Reuters. May 26, 2011.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Creating the Lean Startup. Inc. Magazine. October 2011.
  4. ↑ Lohr, Steve. The Rise of the Fleet-Footed Start-Up. The New York Times. April 24, 2010.
  5. 1 2 3 4 Greenwald, Ted. Upstart Eric Ries Has the Stage and the Crowd Is Going Wild. Wired. May 18, 2012.
  6. ↑ Roush, Wade. Eric Ries, the Face of the Lean Startup Movement, on How a Once-Insane Idea Went Mainstream. Xconomy. July 6, 2011.
  7. ↑ Penenberg, Adam. Eric Ries Is A Lean Startup Machine. Fast Company. September 8, 2011.
  8. ↑ Marshall, Matt. The youth beat goes on -- Phonebites and IMVU score funding. VentureBeat. February 28, 2006.
  9. 1 2 Eric Ries. Business Week.
  10. 1 2 Tam, Pui-Wing. Philosophy Helps Start-Ups Move Faster. The Wall Street Journal. May 20, 2010.
  11. ↑ Bernhard, Jr., Kent. The Biggest Idea of 2011: Think Lean. Portfolio.com. December 30, 2011.
  12. ↑ Solon, Olivia. Interview: Eric Ries, Author Of The Lean Startup. Wired. January 17, 2012.
  13. 1 2 Bury, Erin. How Eric Ries Changed the Framework for Startup Success. Sprouter. December 7, 2011.
  14. ↑ Brustein, Joshua. The Follow-Up to The Lean Startup Is Available Only on Kickstarter. Bloomberg. April 6, 2015.
  15. ↑ Ries, Eric. Thank you! Kickstarter. April 16, 2015.
  16. ↑ "The Startup Way: How Modern Companies Use Entrepreneurial Management to Transform Culture and Drive Long-Term Growth". Retrieved 2017-11-26.
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