The Lean Startup - Eric Ries [122]
4. This is the lesson of Geoffrey Moore’s bestselling book Crossing the Chasm (New York: Harper Paperbacks, 2002).
Chapter 11. Adapt
1. Toyota Production System: Beyond Large-Scale Production by Taiichi Ohno (New York: Productivity Press, 1988).
2. For more on Net Promoter Score, see http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2008/11/net-promoter-score-operational-tool-to.html and The Ultimate Question by Fred Reichheld (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Business Press, 2006).
3. Information about QuickBooks comes from interviews conducted by Marisa Porzig.
Chapter 12. Innovate
1. Jeffrey Liker, John E. Ettlie, and John Creighton Campbell, Engineered in Japan: Japanese Technology-Management Practices (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 196.
2. For one account, see PC Magazine’s “Looking Back: 15 Years of PC Magazine” by Michael Miller, http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,35549,00.asp
3. The following discussion owes a great deal to Geoffrey Moore’s Dealing with Darwin (New York: Portfolio Trade, 2008). I have had success implementing this framework in companies of many different sizes.
Chapter 13. Epilogue: Waste Not
1. http://www.ibiblio.org/eldritch/fwt/ti.html
2. http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/66490.Peter_Drucker
3. http://www.ibiblio.org/eldritch/fwt/ti.html
4. In fact, some such research has already begun. For more on Lean Startup research programs, see Nathan Furr’s Lean Startup Research Project at BYU, http://nathanfurr.com/2010/09/15/the-lean-startup-research-project/, and Tom Eisenmann of Harvard Business School’s Launching Technology Ventures project, http://platformsandnetworks.blogspot.com/2011/01/launching-tech-ventures-part-iv.html
Disclosures
I have worked with the following companies named in this book either as a consultant, adviser, or investor. I have a relationship or equity interest in each of them.
Aardvark IMVU
Dropbox Intuit
Food on the Table Votizen
Grockit Wealthfront
I have additional interests in companies through my affiliations with venture capital firms. I have invested in or worked with the following firms as either a consultant or as a limited partner. Through these firms, I have equity and relationship interests in many more companies beyond those listed above.
500 Startups Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
Floodgate
Greylock Partners Seraph Group
Acknowledgments
I owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to the many people who have helped make The Lean Startup a reality. First and foremost are the thousands of entrepreneurs around the world who have tested these ideas, challenged them, refined them, and improved them. Without their relentless—and mostly unheralded—work every day, none of this would be possible. Thank you.
Real startups involve failure, embarrassing mistakes, and constant chaos. In my research for this book, I discovered that most entrepreneurs and managers would prefer not to have the real story of their daily work told in public. Therefore, I am indebted to the courageous entrepreneurs who consented to have their stories told, many of whom spent hours in tedious interviews and fact-checking conversations. Thank you.
I have been grateful throughout my career to have mentors and collaborators who have pushed me to accomplish more than I could have on my own. Will Harvey is responsible for both recruiting me to Silicon Valley in the first place and for trusting me with the opportunity to try out many of these ideas for the first time at IMVU. I am grateful to my other IMVU cofounders Marcus Gosling, Matt Danzig, and Mel Guymon as well as the many IMVU employees who did so much of the work I discussed. Of course, none of that would have been possible without the support of millions of IMVU customers over the years. I’d also like to thank David Millstone, Ken Duda, Fernando Paiz, Steve Weinstein, Owen Mahoney, Ray Ocampo, and Jason Altieri for their help along the way.
We all owe Steve Blank a debt for the work he did developing the theory of