The fundamental activity of a startup is to turn ideas into products, measure how customers respond, and then learn whether to pivot or persevere.

Validated learning is the process of demonstrating empirically that a team has discovered valuable truths about a startup’s present and future business prospects.

We must learn what customers really want, not what they say they want or what we think they should want.

The big question of our time is not Can it be built? but Should it be built?

A startup is a human institution designed to create a new product or service under conditions of extreme uncertainty.

Vision without execution is hallucination.

Success is not delivering a feature; success is learning how to solve the customer’s problem.

A pivot is a structured course correction designed to test a new fundamental hypothesis about the product, strategy, and engine of growth.

The only way to win is to learn faster than anyone else.

If we do not know what we want, it is unlikely that we will get it.

In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield.

Startups that succeed are those that manage to iterate enough times before running out of resources.

12 Game-Changing Quotes Every Entrepreneur Needs to Hear

Most startups fail. But many of those failures are preventable. The Lean Startup is a new approach being adopted across the globe, changing the way companies are built and new products are launched. Eric Ries defines a startup as an organization dedicated to creating something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty. This is just as true for one person in a garage or a group of seasoned professionals in a Fortune 500 boardroom. What they have in common is a mission to penetrate that fog of uncertainty to discover a successful path to a sustainable business. The Lean Startup approach fosters companies that are both more capital efficient and that leverage human creativity more effectively. Inspired by lessons from lean manufacturing, it relies on “validated learning,” rapid scientific experimentation, as well as a number of counter-intuitive practices that shorten product development cycles, measure actual progress without resorting to vanity metrics, and learn what customers really want. It enables a company to shift directions with agility, altering plans inch by inch, minute by minute. Rather than wasting time creating elaborate business plans, The Lean Startup offers entrepreneurs—in companies of all sizes—a way to test their vision continuously, to adapt and adjust before it’s too late. Ries provides a scientific approach to creating and managing successful startups in a age when companies need to innovate more than ever.

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Eric Ries 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.

ERIC RIES

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