Eric Ries (born September 22, 1978) is an American

entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value in ways that generally entail beyond the minimal amount of risk (assumed by a traditional business), and potentially involving values besides simply economic ones. An entreprene ...

blogger A blog (a Clipping (morphology), truncation of "weblog") is an informational website consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries also known as posts. Posts are typically displayed in Reverse chronology, reverse chronologic ...

, and

author In legal discourse, an author is the creator of an original work that has been published, whether that work exists in written, graphic, visual, or recorded form. The act of creating such a work is referred to as authorship. Therefore, a sculpt ...

of ''

The Lean Startup ''The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses'' is a 2011 book by American entrepreneur Eric Ries. It introduces the lean startup methodology, a systematic approach for deve ...

'', a book on the

lean startup Lean startup is a methodology for developing businesses and products that aims to shorten product development cycles and rapidly discover if a proposed business model is viable; this is achieved by adopting a combination of business-hypothesis-dr ...

movement. He is also the author of ''The Startup Way'', a book on modern entrepreneurial management.

Early life

While at Yale, Ries co-founded Catalyst Recruiting, an online forum for university students to network with potential employers.Venture Capital: Eric Ries, author of "The Lean Startup"
''YouTube''. November 21, 2009.Loizos, Connie
“Lean Startup” evangelist Eric Ries is just getting started
''Reuters''. May 26, 2011. He took a leave of absence to pursue Catalyst Recruiting, but the company soon folded.

Career

IMVU

After graduating, Ries moved to

Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that is a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical area of the Santa Clara Valley ...

in 2001 as a software engineer with There, Inc. He worked with the firm until the 2003 launch of its web-based 3D Virtual World product,

There.com ''There'' is a 3D online virtual world developed and operated by Makena Technologies. The platform opened to the public in October 2003 after a two-year beta and counted more than one million registered members by 2009. Designed for social play r ...

. The company soon failed. In 2004, Ries left to join one of the founders of There.com,

Will Harvey Will Harvey (born 1966 or 1967) is an American software developer and Silicon Valley entrepreneur. He wrote '' Music Construction Set'' (1984) for the Apple II, the first commercial sheet music processor for home computers. ''Music Construction ...

in co-founding IMVU Inc.,Creating the Lean Startup
''Inc. Magazine''. October 2011. a

social network A social network is a social structure consisting of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), networks of Dyad (sociology), dyadic ties, and other Social relation, social interactions between actors. The social network per ...

.Lohr, Steve
The Rise of the Fleet-Footed Start-Up
''The New York Times''. April 24, 2010. IMVU investor

Steve Blank Steve Blank (born 1953) is an American entrepreneur, educator, author and speaker. He created the customer development method that launched the lean startup movement. His work has influenced modern entrepreneurship through the creation of tools a ...

insisted that IMVU executives audit Blank's class on entrepreneurship at

UC Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after the Anglo-Irish philosopher George Berkele ...

.Greenwald, Ted
Upstart Eric Ries Has the Stage and the Crowd Is Going Wild
''Wired''. May 18, 2012. There Ries picked up Blank's method of fast customer feedback, which Blank called "customer development", and applied it at IMVU in combination with

lean software development Lean software development is a translation of lean manufacturing principles and practices to the software development domain. Adapted from the Toyota Production System, it is emerging with the support of a pro-lean subculture within the ag ...

, testing alternate versions of the product and measuring download rates. IMVU deployed code to production nearly 50 times a day, an unusually rapid development cycle.Roush, Wade
Eric Ries, the Face of the Lean Startup Movement, on How a Once-Insane Idea Went Mainstream
''Xconomy''. July 6, 2011. Ries also

copyedit Copy editing (also known as copyediting and manuscript editing) is the process of revising written material (" copy") to improve quality and readability, as well as ensuring that a text is free of errors in grammar, style, and accuracy. ''The Ch ...

ed an early version of Blank's book on customer development, ''The Four Steps to the Epiphany''. IMVU aimed to integrate instant messaging with the high revenue per customer of traditional video games. Ries and Harvey did not seek a large amount of initial funding and released a

minimum viable product A minimum viable product (MVP) is a version of a product with just enough features to be usable by early customers who can then provide feedback for future product development. A focus on releasing an MVP means that developers potentially avoid ...

Penenberg, Adam
Eric Ries Is A Lean Startup Machine
''Fast Company''. September 8, 2011. within six months. In 2006, the firm raised $1 million in its first round of venture fundraising from the Seraph Group, eventually raising an additional 18 million.Marshall, Matt
The youth beat goes on -- Phonebites and IMVU score funding
''VentureBeat''. February 28, 2006. In 2008 after a new CEO joined IMVU, Ries stepped down as CTO, remaining as a board observer.Eric Ries
''Business Week''.Tam, Pui-Wing
Philosophy Helps Start-Ups Move Faster
''The Wall Street Journal''. May 20, 2010.Bernhard, Jr., Kent
The Biggest Idea of 2011: Think Lean
''Portfolio.com''. December 30, 2011.

Lean startup

After leaving IMVU, Ries joined venture capital firm

Kleiner Perkins Kleiner Perkins, formerly Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), is an American venture capital firm which specializes in investing in incubation, early stage and growth companies. Since its founding in 1972, the firm has backed entrepreneur ...

as a venture advisor, and six months later started advising startups independently. Based on his experiences, he developed a methodology based on select management principles to help startups succeed. The

methodology originates from a combination of ideas such as

lean manufacturing Lean manufacturing is a methods of production, method of manufacturing goods aimed primarily at reducing times within the Operations management#Production systems, production system as well as response times from suppliers and customers. It is ...

, which seeks to increase value-creating practices and eliminate wasteful practices,Solon, Olivia
Interview: Eric Ries, Author Of The Lean Startup
''Wired''. January 17, 2012.Bury, Erin
How Eric Ries Changed the Framework for Startup Success
. ''Sprouter''. December 7, 2011. and

's customer development methodology. In 2008, Ries began to document the lean startup methodology on his blog with a post titled "The lean startup". He was invited to speak at the Web 2.0 Expo by

Tim O'Reilly Timothy O'Reilly (born 6 June 1954) is an Irish-American author and publisher, who is the founder of O'Reilly Media (formerly O'Reilly & Associates). He popularised the terms open source and Web 2.0. Education and early life Born in County Co ...

, and was offered a position as entrepreneur-in-residence at

Harvard Business School Harvard Business School (HBS) is the graduate school, graduate business school of Harvard University, a Private university, private Ivy League research university. Located in Allston, Massachusetts, HBS owns Harvard Business Publishing, which p ...

. Ries began to devote all of his time to the lean startup movement, and held conferences, gave talks, wrote blog entries, and served as an advisor to companies. In 2015, he released ''The Leader's Guide'', a self-published version of the curriculum used in his consulting work, exclusively through

Kickstarter Kickstarter, PBC is an American Benefit corporation, public benefit corporation based in Brooklyn, New York City, that maintains a global crowdfunding platform focused on creativity. The company's stated mission is to "help bring creative project ...

, raising $588,903 for its publication.Brustein, Joshua
The Follow-Up to The Lean Startup Is Available Only on Kickstarter
''Bloomberg''. April 6, 2015.Ries, Eric
Thank you!
''Kickstarter''. April 16, 2015. In October 2017, he released a follow-up book, ''The Startup Way'', which shows the application of entrepreneurial principles in larger corporate environments. Sales of ''The Startup Way'' were not as strong as Ries' preceding book ''The Lean Startup''.

Long-Term Stock Exchange

In 2015, Ries began organizing The Long-Term Stock Exchange (LTSE), which is building a new US stock exchange that aims to align the interests of companies and long-term investors and improve the public company experience. Ries had proposed the idea of the LTSE in his book ''The Lean Startup''. On November 30, 2018, LTSE filed an application to the

Securities and Exchange Commission The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government, created in the aftermath of the Wall Street crash of 1929. Its primary purpose is to enforce laws against market m ...

for registration as a national securities exchange. On May 10, 2019, the Securities and Exchange Commission approved the Long-Term Stock Exchange as a national securities exchange.

Selected publications

* Ries, Eric. ''The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses''. Currency, 2011. * Ries, Eric. ''The Startup Way: How Modern Companies Use Entrepreneurial Management to Transform Culture and Drive Long-Term Growth''. Currency, 2017.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ries, Eric Living people 1978 births Place of birth missing (living people) 21st-century American businesspeople Yale University alumni American business writers American venture capitalists