Eric Ries

Eric Ries (born September 22, 1978) is an American entrepreneur, blogger, and author of The Lean Startup, a book on the lean startup movement. He is also the author of The Startup Way, a book on modern entrepreneurial management.

Early life In High School he published a book, Black Art of Java Game Programming.

While an undergraduate at Yale University, Ries co-founded Catalyst Recruiting, an online forum for university students to network with potential employers. The company received funding but ran out of money in the dot-com bust. IMVU investor Steve Blank insisted that IMVU executives audit Blank's class on entrepreneurship at UC Berkeley. Ries also copyedited an early version of Blank's book on customer development, The Four Steps to the Epiphany.

IMVU aimed to integrate instant messaging with the high revenue per customer of traditional video games. Ries and Harvey did not seek a large amount of initial funding and released a minimum viable product within six months. In 2008 after a new CEO joined IMVU, Ries stepped down as CTO, remaining as a board observer.

Lean startup

After leaving IMVU, Ries joined venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins as a venture advisor, and six months later started advising startups independently. and Steve Blank's customer development methodology.

In 2008, Ries began to document the lean startup methodology on his blog with a post titled "The lean startup".

He was invited to speak at the Web 2.0 Expo by Tim O'Reilly, and was offered a position as entrepreneur-in-residence at Harvard Business School. In October 2017, he released a follow-up book, The Startup Way, which shows the application of entrepreneurial principles in larger corporate environments. Sales of The Startup Way were not as strong as Ries' preceding book The Lean Startup.

Long-Term Stock Exchange In 2015, Ries began organizing The Long-Term Stock Exchange (LTSE), which is building a new US stock exchange that aims to align the interests of companies and long-term investors and improve the public company experience. Ries had proposed the idea of the LTSE in his book The Lean Startup. On May 10, 2019, the Securities and Exchange Commission approved the Long-Term Stock Exchange as a national securities exchange.

Selected publications

Incorruptible: Why Good Companies Go Bad... and How Great Companies Stay Great. Authors Equity, 2026 The Startup Way: How Modern Companies Use Entrepreneurial Management to Transform Culture and Drive Long-Term Growth. Currency, 2017. The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses. Currency, 2011.