The Lean Startup - Eric Ries [119]
1. The original five founders of IMVU were Will Harvey, Marcus Gosling, Matt Danzig, Mel Guymon, and myself.
2. Usage in the United States was even more concentrated; see http://www.businessweek.com/technology/tech_stats/im050307.htm
3. To hear more about IMVU’s early conversations with customers that led to our pivot away from the add-on strategy, see: http://mixergy.com/ries-lean/
4. A word of caution: demonstrating validated learning requires the right kind of metrics, called actionable metrics, which are discussed in Chapter 7.
5. This case was written by Bethany Coates under the direction of Professor Andy Rachleff. You can get a copy here: http://hbr.org/product/imvu/an/E254-PDF-ENG
Chapter 4. Experiment
1. Some entrepreneurs have adopted this slogan as their startup philosophy, using the acronym JFDI. A recent example can be seen at http://www.cloudave.com/1171/what-makes-an-entrepreneur-four-letters-jfdi/
2. http://techcrunch.com/2009/11/02/amazon-closes-zappos-deal-ends-up-paying-1–2-billion/
3. I want to thank Caroline Barlerin and HP for allowing me to include my experimental analysis of this new project.
4. Information about Kodak Gallery comes from interviews conducted by Sara Leslie.
5. The VLS story was recounted by Elnor Rozenrot, formerly of Innosight Ventures. Additional detail was provided by Akshay Mehra. For more on the VLS, see the article in Harvard Business Review: http://hbr.org/2011/01/new-business-models-in-emerging-markets/ar/1 or press coverage at http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/news-by-company/corporate-trends/village-laundry-services-takes-on-the-dhobi/articleshow/5325032.cms
6. For more on the early efforts of the CFPB, see the Wall Street Journal’s April 13, 2011, article “For Complaints, Don’t Call Consumer Bureau Yet”; http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703551304576260772357440148.html. Many dedicated public servants are currently working hard to incorporate this experimental approach in the public sector under the leadership of President Obama. I would like to thank Aneesh Chopra, Chris Vein, Todd Park, and David Forrest for introducing me to these groundbreaking efforts.
Chapter 5. Leap
1. For example, CU Community, which began at Columbia University, had an early head start. See http://www.slate.com/id/2269131/. This account of Facebook’s founding is drawn from David Kirkpatrick’s The Facebook Effect (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011).
2. Actual engagement numbers from 2004 are hard to find, but this pattern has been consistent throughout Facebook’s public statements. For example, Chris Hughes reported in 2005 that “60% log in daily. About 85% log in at least once a week, and 93% log in at least once a month.” http://techcrunch.com/2005/09/07/85-of-college-students-use-facebook/
3. I first heard the term leap of faith applied to startup assumptions by Randy Komisar, a former colleague and current partner at the venture firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. He expands on the concept in his book Getting to Plan B, coauthored with John Mullins.
4. http://www.forbes.com/2009/09/17/venture-capital-ipod-intelligent-technology-komisar.html
5. “A carefully researched table compiled for Motor magazine by Charles E. Duryea, himself a pioneer carmaker, revealed that from 1900 to 1908, 501 companies were formed in the United States for the purpose of manufacturing automobiles. Sixty percent of them folded outright within a couple of years; another 6 percent moved into other areas of production.” This quote is from the Ford biography The People’s Tycoon: Henry Ford and the American Century by Steven Watts (New York: Vintage, 2006).
6. Jeffrey K. Liker, The Toyota Way. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2003, p. 223.
7. http://www.autofieldguide.com/articles/030302.html
8. In the customer development model, this is called customer discovery.
9. For more on the founding of Intuit, see Suzanne Taylor and Kathy Schroeder, Inside Intuit.