Eric Ries (The Lean Startup) - Be the Human Spark

SPEAKER_1 (0:01)

This is the Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Series, brought to you by Stanford eCorner and the Stanford Technology Ventures Program.

Ravi (0:07)

Welcome everybody to this week's Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Seminar, brought to you by STVP and the Management Science and Engineering Department. We are so excited for this week's ETL, but to introduce our VIP this week, we're going to do a fireside chat format, and let me introduce you to the facilitator of the fireside, which is Professor Saikat Chaudhuri. Professor Chaudhuri is the leading director of the Entrepreneurship Center in the Engineering School, STVP, and a professor in the Management Science and Engineering Department. There's a lot of excitement around Professor Chaudhuri, because he's the newest addition to the faculty, but that belies the long tenure that he brings to the role. He was formerly the Faculty Director of UC Berkeley's MET program, Management, Entrepreneurship, and Technology, and brings a profound amount of experience on thinking at issues at the intersection of entrepreneurship, technology, and innovation.

He's not just a thought leader on how to start startups, but he's also a thought leader on thinking about navigating through the challenges of disruption and scaling, which is why he is perfect for leading our fireside today. Let me hand it over to Professor Chaudhuri.

Saikat Chaudhuri (1:19)

Thank you so much. Overly generous introduction, Ravi. I could not be more excited to be here because I get a taste of what all of you are about and get to do this fireside with our special guest.

Our guest, Eric Ries, doesn't need much of an introduction. You've probably heard his name. And just in case you haven't, I guarantee you've heard about the ideas. He's the author of The Lean Startup. He's also written Startup Way and The Leader's Guide, and most currently another book that's come out is called Incorruptible. So we're going to talk about all those things today. But Eric really brings decades of experience when it comes to not just helping startups, but also advising established organizations and how they navigate different kinds of innovation through different phases, such as the disruptions that we're seeing today. So he's particularly suitable for these kinds of topics that we have. But he's also been an entrepreneur himself in the legal space with the Long-Term Stock Exchange, answer.ai. He's delving in all these things where he really practices what he preaches. He also has a podcast called The Eric Ries Show, where he has all kinds of interesting technologists and other leaders in the room whom he talks to as well. This time we're going to be the ones asking questions and having some fun with him, but usually he's in the other seat. But please join me in welcoming Eric Ries.

Thanks for being here.

Make sure that mic's on.

Eric Ries (2:57)

Testing one, two, three. Can you hear me? Can you hear me in the back? Hi, everybody. Thanks for coming.

Saikat Chaudhuri (3:01)

All right.

Eric Ries (3:02)

You have a full house.

Saikat Chaudhuri (3:03)

How does it feel to be back?

Eric Ries (3:05)

It's nice to be back. I haven't done this in a few years, so it's very nice to be back.

Saikat Chaudhuri (3:09)

Awesome. I mean, it's so great to have you here. I mean, you see the room has completely-

Eric Ries (3:13)

Well, ETL is now so much bigger than it was in my memory. I'm saying to everybody, I had to update my mental model. What's happening at Stanford?

Ana (3:20)

Yeah.

Saikat Chaudhuri (3:21)

Facilities are nicer.

Ana (3:22)

Yes.

Eric Ries (3:23)

Building is a lot nicer.

Ana (3:24)

That's true.

Saikat Chaudhuri (3:25)

We were reminiscing earlier about this as well, but it's awesome to have you back. Look, we're going to talk about your latest work, but before that, I do want to get into the Lean Startup and the methodology that you thought of as well. We're in the era of AI. All these folks here are thinking about startups or joining all kinds of companies that are wrestling with AI.

But I want to ask you, is the Lean Startup methodology still relevant?

Eric Ries (3:51)

Well, first of all, thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_6 (3:53)

Thanks everybody for coming.

Eric Ries (3:55)

We're getting right to it. Okay. We are. Listen, I think it's held up pretty well.

Look, Lean Startup was published in 2011 So this is actually the 15th anniversary of the book coming out.

I didn't know what 2026 was going to look like when I wrote the book. I only wrote that I thought that two trends would continue, pretty much indefinitely in our lifetimes. On the one hand, the cost and speed of developing new products would collapse. So it would get cheaper and faster every year all the time. Partly as a result of number one, the level of uncertainty that we would face in all manner of business and institution building would go up. So faster building and higher uncertainty. The book has been out a couple of months now. So I've been interviewed a bunch of times and a very common question I get now is, do I feel vindicated by events that I'm like, oh, I like getting that question. That's pretty cool. Yeah, I think that's held up pretty well. If you look, I did an interview on Lenny's podcast. I'm sure many of you watch and those that don't, you should be. He's been on a tear interviewing all of the product managers who build all these AI products at the major labs. He made the observation that although they don't always use Lean Startup jargon because that's really more of an internal-facing thing. If you watch what they say about how they build, the ones that are having success are very much still MVP, iteration, experimentation, like it's really there. I hadn't really thought about it that way because I know a lot of these AI founders have been involved with these companies, so I've watched it happen. But it was nice if somebody else take a step back and say, yeah, I think it's still alive and kicking, so I feel pretty good about that.