Reflections on a movement | Eric Ries (creator of the Lean Startup methodology)

... people act like having a startup fail is the worst thing that can happen to you. I'm like, "Man, that's not even in the top 10." Like it's b- it's bad. I mean I've d- I've done it. It's awful, okay? It's really bad. But far worse is to be in a company that won't die, a zombie undead company that you hate but you can't leave. Oof, have I met people like that. And like, we're having a mental health crisis among founders that's like not talked about enough. You know, people have started to talk about like the downside mental health risks. Obviously the stress of being a founder is hard, but like look what's happening to the people that are so-called successes. Like, I, when you build a company and you sell it out and it becomes something that you find abhorrent, like yeah, maybe you get rich but it's, it's not, it's not good. And so building a company you hate that, that becomes a malign force in the world, you know, that you have to go pretend you weren't involved with or that like you feel complicit in what ... Like, that's way, way worse and I wish more founders would take that more seriously early on.

(instrumental music) Today my guest is Eric Ries. If you're not familiar with his work, I would be shocked. He is most famous for creating the Lean Startup methodology and movement, and also his incredibly influential book, The Lean Startup. He also coined more terms and concepts that are part of the tech culture than anyone I could think of. He currently spends his time advising founders and startups. He was a former founder and CTO, and currently is the founder and executive chairman of The Long-Term Stock Exchange. This is now my favorite episode of the podcast and I can't wait for you to hear it. In our conversation, we cover a lot of ground, including the current state of the Lean Startup movement, where he sees things heading, what Eric would re-do if he could do it over again, misconceptions about the methodology that frustrate him most, how AI will likely impact product development in startups, how to think about MVPs correctly, when to pivot and when to stay the course, also how to build a business with values that are aligned with human flourishing. Also, tons of amazing stories and lessons, and there's just so much gold in this conversation. And so with that, I bring you Eric Ries after a short word from our sponsors. This episode is brought to you by Sanity. Your website is the heart of your growth engine. For that engine to drive big results, you need to be able to move super fast, ship new content, experiment, learn, and iterate. But most content management systems just aren't built for this. Your content teams wrestle with rigid interfaces as they build new pages. You spend endless time copying and pasting across pages and recreating content for other channels and applications. And their ideas for new experiments are squashed when developers can't build them within the constraints of outdated tech. Forward-thinking companies like Figma, Amplitude, Loom, Riot Games, Linear, and more use Sanity to build content growth engines that scale, drive innovation, and accelerate customer acquisition. With Sanity, your team can dream bigger and move faster. As the most powerful headless CMS on the market, you can tailor editorial workflows to match your business, reuse content seamlessly across any page or channel, and bring your ideas to market without developer friction. Sanity makes life better for your whole team. It's fast for developers to build with, intuitive for content managers, and it integrates seamlessly with the rest of your tech stack. Get started with Sanity's generous free plan, and as a Lenny's Podcast listener you can get a boosted plan with double the monthly usage. Head over to sanity.io/lenny to get started for free. That's sanity.io/lenny. You fell in love with building products for a reason, but sometimes the day-to-day reality is a little different than you imagined. Instead of dreaming up big ideas, talking to customers, and crafting a strategy, you're drowning in spreadsheets and roadmap updates and you're spending your days basically putting out fires. A better way is possible. Introducing Jira Product Discovery, the new prioritization and roadmapping tool built for product teams by Atlassian. With Jira Product Discovery, you can gather all your product ideas and insights in one place and prioritize confidently, finally replacing those endless spreadsheets. Create and share custom product roadmaps with any stakeholder in seconds, and it's all built on Jira, where your engineering team is already working, so true collaboration is finally possible. Great products are built by great teams, not just engineers. Sales, support, leadership, even Greg from finance. Anyone that you want can contribute ideas, feedback, and insights in Jira Product Discovery for free, no catch. And it's only $10 a month for you. Say goodbye to your spreadsheets and the never-ending alignment efforts. The old way of doing product management is over. Rediscover what's possible with Jira Product Discovery. Try it for free at atlassian.com/lenny. That's atlassian.com/lenny. Eric Ries, thank you so much for being here. Welcome to the podcast.