169 Quotes by Eric Ries

The point is not to find the average customer but to find early adopters: the customers who feel the need for the product most acutely. Those customers tend to be more forgiving of mistakes and are especially eager to give feedback.

The ability to learn faster from customers is the essential competitive advantage that startups must possess.

The Toyota Way.

Startup, I have always been a bit of a troublemaker at the companies at which I have worked, pushing for rapid iteration, data-driven decision making, and early customer involvement.

Except in very narrow cases, where there’s breakthrough science that needs patent production, worrying about competitors is a waste of time. If you can’t out iterate someone who is trying to copy you, you’re toast anyway.

The one envelope at a time approach is called “single-piece flow.

In the twenty-first century, we face a new set of problems that Taylor could not have imagined. Our productive capacity greatly exceeds our ability to know what to build. Although.

Learning to see waste and then systematically eliminate it has allowed lean companies such as Toyota to dominate entire industries.

Startups exist not just to make stuff, make money, or even serve customers. They exist to learn how to build a sustainable business. This.