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Eric Ries, Harvard Business School entrepreneur-in-residence, gives his tips on how startups can survive today.
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By Kathleen good seeing you thank you so much you know -- -- all try to start up is about creating something new and avoiding the notoriously high failure rate.
Eric Greece's entrepreneur in residence at Harvard Business School and author of the -- to start up number to.
On the New York Times best seller list this -- Gary joins us right now from San Francisco with five tips on how to build a start -- that survives Eric welcome to the -- And -- from -- -- -- -- is your number one civil put up the tips appear the five so that everybody could see them at home.
And I think you're you're number one most important -- but you tell everybody is.
Everything -- sort of does is an experiment explain that one to us.
We live at a time where we can build pretty much anything we can imagine.
So the big question that faces -- partners is not candidate until.
But should it be -- are we on the path to a sustainable business are we basically building something that nobody wants.
And so we have to re conceive everything we do every feature every marketing campaign everything -- -- does.
As an experiment as a scientific experiment designed to teach us before on a path that's sustainable business.
You know your second tip I think is sort of goes along with that add to build Abe.
A minimally viable product still gonna go in with all these grandiose plans on -- -- -- -- it's -- too long to build a product too long to test it.
You wanna be able to be more nimble -- -- do that you've got to build -- how would you describe as a minimally viable.
Brought.
A taste -- from one company that that profile in the book.
-- instead of building this really complicated shopping services are -- helping people shop for their family at a grocery store they could have built a complicated algorithm and software for years instead.
They just went into a local supermarket as sort of selling the product manually by hand one customer at a time.
And once they had too many customers need to be able to help tonight what's it to make customers able to serve them by hand.
That's when they were able to -- start using software to start automating the process.
You know you also is 88 -- I think it's probably very difficult to do especially because you're dealing entrepreneurs are very -- -- they're very confident.
But knowing when to pivot I think that's the fifth -- idealist the tip on here in.
I think that's got to be very difficult to do because even though you're not changing your vision you are changing how you're going about the putting the of your product.
That is -- the right way to think about it that it is a change in strategy with out the change in vision.
You don't ask the data you don't ask customers where you're trying to go any more than you'd ask your -- GPS where you wanna go.
Your strategy is supposed to help you get to -- He did.
The problem is that in the shower or thinking about our startup ideas they seem so brilliant everything confirms that we're on the right track it always seems right.
The most painful thing we have to do as entrepreneurs is really make that hard cold -- determination is it time to -- -- or should we persevere.
Yeah and one final thing here Eric another part of the are they confident entrepreneurs you want to go out and tell people about your product right away boy you wanna start selling it.
As soon as you think about it you say that's probably the one of the worst things you could do.
Yet at least what we call success theater which -- see a lot here in Silicon Valley the work that we do to make ourselves seen successful in the Preston.
Get a lot of people telling us validating our idea anybody but customers so every ounce of energy we put in pounding our chest and showing off how great our product is.
Is energy we could have spent.
Building a great product finding is serving customers well so we're trying to stick the whole lot -- -- -- ecosystem away from that kind of success theater really towards learning how to serve customers well number two on the hardcover advice -- video at times ahead of the Guinness book of world records and living beyond your feelings which is always when my favorites thank you -- great start but.
And I thank you so much appreciate it -- -- -- -- up next the final look at the markets this hour as we close out the third quarter keeping.
