Webstock '10: Eric Ries - The Lean Startup

Eric Ries

The Lean Startup

High-tech product development projects are notoriously difficult to manage. They come in over budget and behind schedule, draining cash reserves and squandering revenue opportunities. Many fail outright. Often times, when customers hands finally touch the product, it is unusable, buggy, or defective. Worst of all, the software may work as specified, but there are simply no customers willing to purchase it. All of these problems share a common cause: the tremendous waste inherent in an undisciplined approach to imagining, designing, and building new products. The current macroeconomic climate presents unparalleled opportunities for those that can thrive with constrained resources. The Lean Startup is a practical approach for creating and managing a new breed of company that excels in low-cost experimentation, rapid iteration, and true customer insight. It uses principles of agile software development, open source and web 2.0, and lean manufacturing to guide the creation of technology businesses that create disruptive innovation. In this presentation, serial entrepreneur Eric Ries will share practical solutions based in his work building IMVU to more than 25 million members worldwide and his experiences consulting to more than a dozen technology startups.