The Lean Startup - Eric Ries [123]
The Lean Startup movement is made up of many more thinkers, practitioners, and writers than just me. I want to thank Dave McClure, Ash Maurya, Brant Cooper, Patrick Vlaskovits, Sean Ellis, Andrew Chen, Sean Murphy, Trevor Owens, Hiten Shah, and Kent Beck for their ideas, support, and evangelism. Several investors and venture capitalists were early supporters and adopters. I would like to thank Mike Maples and Ann Miura-Ko (Floodgate), Steve Anderson (Baseline), Josh Kopelman (First Round Capital), Ron Conway (SV Angel), and Jeff Clavier (SoftTech VC).
As you can imagine, this book involved a tremendous amount of feedback, iteration, and testing. I received invaluable, in-depth early feedback from Laura Crescimano, Lee Hoffman, Professor Tom Eisenmann, and Sacha Judd. Thanks also to Mitch Kapor, Scott Cook, Shawn Fanning, Mark Graban, Jennifer Carolan, Manuel Rosso, Tim O’Reilly, and Reid Hoffman for their suggestions, feedback, and support. I owe a special note of thanks to Ruth Kaplan and Ira Fay for their wisdom and friendship.
Throughout the process of writing the book, I had the benefit of a custom-built testing platform to run split-test experiments on everything from cover design to subtitles to actual bits of the book (you can see the results of these experiments at http://lean.st). Pivotal Labs built this software for me; they are the premier practitioners of agile development. Special thanks to Rob Mee, Ian McFarland, and—most important—Parker Thompson, who worked tirelessly to build, experiment, and learn with me.
Thanks also to IMVU cofounder Marcus Gosling, one of the most talented designers I know, who designed this book’s cover, after countless iterations.
One of the premier web and user experience design firms, Digital Telepathy, designed and built the website for http://theleanstartup.com, using their unique Iterative Performance Design process. It’s awesome. Learn more at http://www.dtelepathy.com/
I was extremely fortunate to have the support of three legendary institutions at various points in my journey. Much of the research that went into this book was generously underwritten by the Kauffman Foundation. At Kauffman, I want to especially thank Bo Fishback and Nick Seguin for their support. I spent the past year as an entrepreneur-in-residence at Harvard Business School, where I enjoyed the opportunity to test my ideas against some of the brightest minds in business. I am especially grateful to Professors Tom Eisenmann and Mike Roberts for their sponsorship and support, as well as to the students of the HBS Startup Tribe. I also had the opportunity to spend a brief time with an office at the premier venture capital firm in Silicon Valley, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, where I received an in-depth education into how entrepreneurship is nurtured at the highest levels. Thanks to Chi-Hua Chien, Randy Komisar, Matt Murphy, Bing Gordon, Aileen Lee, and Ellen Pao, and to my officemate and EIR, Cyriac Roeding.
My research team helped me document case studies, interview hundreds of startups, and filter thousands of stories. I want to thank Marisa Porzig, who logged countless hours documenting, cross-referencing, and investigating. Additional case studies were developed by Sara Gaviser Leslie and Sarah Milstein.
Traditional publishing is a complicated and insular business. I benefited from advice and connections from many people. Tim Ferriss and Ramit Sethi set me straight early on. I am also grateful to Peter Sims, Paul Michelman, Mary Treseler, Joshua-Michéle Ross, Clara Shih, Sarah Milstein, Adam Penenberg, Gretchen Rubin, Kate Lee, Hollis Heimbouch, Bob Sutton, Frankie Jones, Randy Komisar, and Jeff Rosenthal.
At Crown, the herculean task of turning this idea into