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mechanical_fish

I can't think of anyone I respect on entrepreneurship that doesn't practice it themselves.

Me neither, but perhaps you were asleep during the part of the program where Eric Ries:

A) worked at at least one startup that exploded on impact with the market in spectacular fashion,

B) learned some lessons from that,

C) co-founded IMVU and made a bunch of money?

Ries may have faults, but a complete lack of practice does not appear to be among them.

As for your allergy to salesmanship: Reticence sells nothing.

I wish Ries luck in leveraging the awesome psychological powers of branding and the publishing hype cycle to get his ideas in front of more people. I know I've lost years of my time to management who had apparently never heard of these ideas.

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I'm totally with you. I respect Eric Ries for the following reasons:

1. He's on the path of truth and justice (i.e. the concept of the lean startup is "right" -- the more people follow it, the less entrepreneurial energy is wasted).

2. He's smart.

3. He's articulate and knows how to market/sell.

And, hucksters generally sell something that is not fundamentally attainable by most of those being sold to. The lean startup model does not fall into that bucket.

IIRC he was at IMVU for only the first few years. Mostly before the company grew. Regardless I don't see how that single historical piece of entrepreneurial experience translates into a three item list.

I don't think it's his relative lack of experience that I have a problem with so much as the conscious effort he's making to become a "guru" that sells picks to the miners.

For what it's worth: I don't live in Silicon Valley. My routine dinner company does not include investors or people working on startups. Eric Ries has over the last several years demonstrated his credibility to me on his blog by teaching me things which, on multiple occasions, I was able to implement to dramatic effect in my own business.

Want a concrete example? He had a post, years ago, on why A/B testing needs to be a one-liner or you will never do it. That resonated with me, strongly, and that became the design brief for A/Bingo. I prioritized that feature over pretty much everything else in my implementation, and it is a major part of the reason why it works for me. Some years later I'm considered somewhat of an authority on the subject (funny how that works), and when I go in to companies to work with them on A/B testing, the best single process improvement we get -- and we get it virtually without fail -- is going from "A/B testing takes a bunch of work with logging into a product from a large multinational advertising agency, filling out a few forms, and copy/pasting up the wazoo -- and as a consequence we did three A/B tests a year ago and haven't done anything since" to "our engineers put in the A/B tests themselves automatically because it is easier than not doing it."

By the way, as it regards picks and miners: it takes a special kind of mind to see publishing a book as a route to fame and fortune on the backs of the little guy if one is also capable of, say, consulting on A/B testing.

Some people say Tim Ferris helps them in similar ways. Little tips that push you into doing things you already knew you should doing.

They probably both offer some value by packaging existing ideas in more palatable ways. If you don't mind the motivations and style (like I do) you can probably extract some benefit. It's just not for me.

Reply to your edit: You must not be aware of how much money conferences can make to not see the profit motive there. Even moderately successful tech conferences can generate millions per year. Far better than a consulting business. It takes time to build up to that of course. Publishing a book is Conference Building 101.

There's a huge difference between Tim Ferris and Eric Ries. If you made these charges against Ferris, I'd agree with you. Ferris is constantly self promoting, and attempting to cultivate a cult of personality. I know what Tim Ferris looks like because his mug is on everything he does.

I have no clue what Eric looks like. I find Eric makes suggestions that are far less obvious than Ferris. I find that Eric promotes his ideas over himself.

The accusation that this is all just "existing ideas" is kinda silly, given how infrequently this perspective existed even in cutting edge circles like "Hacker News" even a couple years ago.

It has started getting traction, this is true, but 5 years ago, it was a radical idea, and 3 years ago, there were very few practitioners and 2 years ago it wasn't even a movement.

In fact, I strongly suspect that Reis is the source of the ideas that Ferris used in his book.

> I have no clue what Eric looks like

Here you go: http://www.google.com/search?q=eric+ries&tbm=isch

(I was an early employee at IMVU, #5 or so. I left IMVU in January).

It's easy to discount Eric's influence, saying "he was only there for the first few years", but it's wrong.

Will Harvey, the original CEO, had the "vision" for what the product would be.

But Eric (and Steve Blank) provided the vision for how the business should operate. This has turned out to be much more important, for basically all the reasons that Lean Startup people advocate (pivoting, testing assumptions rather than "executing one guy's vision", etc).

You know how people stress how important it is to establish company culture, especially when the company is small? "The original Lean Startup" is Eric's legacy at IMVU. Split testing, continuous deployment, 5 whys, etc... These all still define IMVU's company culture.

The current executive team are good, competent people. And it's true that the company crossed the line into profitability (a watershed moment for any startup) under their watch. But, despite this, IMVU has been impacted far more by Eric than by any other individual.

(I was at IMVU for almost four years, just left last week, and was originally on-boarded there during the last six months of Eric's stay.)

The tone of testing everything, revalidating assumptions, and relentlessly refining process after mistakes stayed with the company well after Eric left, and is going strong to this day.

Just because he self-promotes doesn't invalidate the fact that he has keen insights worth learning. After practicing these "lean startup" habits for the past four years, I can't imagine working without them.

(Was going to respond to the grandparent message before I saw Dusty's response, figured I'd chime in anyway after seeing it.)

"Exploded on impact with the market in spectacular fashion"? Leverage the "awesome psychological powers of branding and the publishing hype cycle"?

I suggest you switch to decaf ;)

I suggest you shutup.

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