There is much that public policy can do to support American entrepreneurs. Health insurance reform will make it easier for entrepreneurs to take a chance on a new business without putting their family’s health at risk. Tort reform will make it easier to take prudent risks on new products in a number of sectors. Eric Ries Read Quote
The United States is locked in a new arms race for that most precious resource – the future entrepreneurs upon whom economic growth depends. Substantial research shows that immigrants play a key role in American job creation. Eric Ries Read Quote
When Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak created Apple computer in a garage in Palo Alto, it heralded the beginning of the PC revolution that ultimately dealt a death-blow to dozens of older companies. Eric Ries Read Quote
I actually believed if you work hard enough it was inevitable you’d succeed. Then I lived the ‘Social Network’ movie, but only the first half. The hardest part is the grueling work of constantly being wrong. Eric Ries Read Quote
You know how people always talk about how vision is the key to entrepreneurship and perseverance and really seeing what other people don’t see? We can actually redeem a fair amount of that folk wisdom. Eric Ries Read Quote
Most start-up companies fail and it is smart public policy to help entrepreneurs increase their odds of succeeding. But, the biggest loss to our economy is not all the start-ups that didn’t make it: It’s the ones that might have been created but weren’t. Eric Ries Read Quote
Entrepreneurship is not really building a product, it’s not having an idea, it’s not being in the right place at the right time. It’s fundamentally company building. Eric Ries Read Quote
Nowadays people talk about PayPal’s founders as prescient geniuses who would inevitably change the world. It was, however, not so obvious that PayPal would taste its first major success by helping people sell Beanie Babies on eBay. But they had a vision, a hope, and the perseverance to try multiple iterations until they got it right. Eric Ries Read Quote
In my first start-up, I had an initial advertising budget of $5 per day total. That would buy us 100 clicks per day. At $5 per day, marketing people scoffed and said that is too small to matter. But if you think about it, to an engineer, 100 real humans everyday giving your product a try means you can really start improving. Eric Ries Read Quote
Building the right product requires systematically and relentlessly testing that vision to discover which elements of it are brilliant, and which are crazy. Eric Ries Read Quote
