Eric Ries

Learning to see waste and systematically eliminate it has allowed lean companies such as Toyota to dominate entire industries. Lean thinking defines value as 'providing benefit to the customer'; anything else is waste. ”

Entrepreneurs always pitch their idea as 'the X of Y', so this is going to be 'the Microsoft of food.' And yet disruptive innovations usually don't have that character. Most of the time, if something seems like a good idea, it probably isn't. ”

The problem with entrepreneurship is we are often working really hard producing high quality products that no-one wants. The creation of stuff is not valued. ”

The mistake isn't releasing something bad. The mistake is to launch it and get PR people involved. You don't want people to start amping up expectations for an early version of your product. The best entrepreneurship happens in low-stakes environments where no one is paying attention, like Mark Zuckerberg's dorm room at Harvard. ”

I believe for the first time in history, entrepreneurship is now a viable career. ”

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. ”

The biggest start-up successes - from Henry Ford to Bill Gates to Mark Zuckerberg - were pioneered by people from solidly middle-class backgrounds. These founders were not wealthy when they began. They were hungry for success, but knew they had a solid support system to fall back on if they failed. ”

Start-ups make so many mistakes that the challenge to identify the root cause of a failure is tough. But believing in your own plan is probably the worst. ”

It was 1999, and we were building a way for college kids to create online profiles for the purpose of sharing... with employers. Oops. I vividly remember the moment I realized my company was going to fail. My co-founder and I were at our wits' end. By 2001, the dot-com bubble had burst, and we had spent all our money. ”

When it comes to meritocracy and diversity, the symbolic is real. And that means that simple actions that reduce bias, such as blind resume or application screening, are a double win: they reduce implicit bias and they help communicate our commitment to meritocracy. ”