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I'm Eric Ries, author of "The Lean Startup" and new book "Incorruptible" – AMA

809 points by eries ↗ HN
Hey gang, you may remember me from such books as _The Lean Startup_ and _The Startup Way_.

It's been fifteen years since I wrote The Lean Startup, and in that time I've seen some things. In both big companies and tiny startups, NGOs and governments, in almost every industry you can name.

I've helped a lot of people create a lot of amazing companies, but I've also seen so many ways this can go wrong. There's a darkness in our industry that we often don't talk about.

I kept watching good companies drift away from the missions they were founded on. Not because anyone woke up one day and decided to be evil, but because the structure they were built on slowly pulled them there. I call that pull "financial gravity."

We've all experienced watching a company we love or admire be warped and broken beyond recognition; until it's a husk of its former self, or worse. I wanted to understand why. And I wanted to know what all of us can do to stop that from happening.

My new book _Incorruptible_ is my attempt to explain the invisible forces that shape organizations, and how a handful of companies (like Costco, Patagonia, and Novo Nordisk) have successfully been structured to resist gravity and thrive for decades -- or even centuries.

Along the way, I founded the Long-Term Stock Exchange, co-founded an AI R&D lab called Answer.AI with Jeremy Howard, and helped a number of notable companies with their governance (yes, including Anthropic).

I won't pretend I have this all figured out, but I've probably spent more time than is healthy on the "why do good companies go bad" question. Ask me anything!

227 comments

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zelias
Big fan of your work!

Let's say this has already happened and ossified across large, formerly-innovative companies that now have so much size and inertia behind them that it might take decades for one to "fail" in a traditional sense. What can be done to reverse the process?

eries
For those that want to go deeper with _Incorruptible_, I've spent the past few months doing hundreds of interviews and events discussing its various themes and topics. I'm having Claude Code summarize this progress along the way at https://howisincorruptiblegoing.com/

You can also see the various accolades, reviews, and awards that it's accumulated so far.

andsoitis
What do you think are the hallmarks of a great company mission?
akurilin
Looking forward to reading this. Still have a signed copy of The Lean Startup from an event in Seattle from 15 years ago. The book had a big part in pushing me towards doing my own lean startup just a year later, so, thank you.
mrdrqr
What parts of The Lean Startup would you update for the AI era?
fapi1974
Are the lessons you have distilled applicable to other institutions in society which decline due to corruption? How is corruption different from your concept of financial gravity?
k2xl
Why did you decide to write this book?
Eridrus
Is it realistic to make organizations that stay on mission long after the founder is gone?

I listened to a podcast interview you did where you talked positively about the Novo Nordisk Foundation as a successful governance story, but when I think of long lived foundations, I think of the Ford Foundation and the Hewlet Foundation that have significantly drifted from the founders' visions despite being non-profits. Many people think it is better for foundations to spend down all their resources before the founder is gone to prevent this drift and loss of efficacy.

Have you done any studies of what made long lived foundations drift on their mission despite no profit incentive?

rdeboo
Does "financial gravity" imply that noble missions are generally less profitable? Is there a way to align that (maybe by governments structuring the market with taxes / regulations)? Is that realistic?
ixxie
I've long been suspicious of the conflicts of interest induced by exit-orientated investment models.

I'm curious if you think cooperative businesses leveraging non-voting preferred shares, community shares and other coop investment instruments are more resilient against this type of corruption.

I'm wonder how you see the tradeoffs these models have against traditional LLC/VC models and how you would mitigate them.

i_like_waiting2
Huge fan of lean startup. With being able to build MVP in hours with AI, has the "build-measure-learn" loop collapsed into something fundamebtally different? Or did the bottleneck moved elsewhere?
m_a_g
Any examples of corrupted companies that you’d like to share? I’m especially curious about your thoughts on Meta and Google, the biggest startups of their time and how they evolved.
zurfer
Is LTSE working the way you hoped?
caputchin
I would love to know more example of good and bad companies
foo-bar-baz529
The only thing that can topple Patagonia is Pattie Gonia
ernsheong
Well, what does "lean startup" mean in this AI age? what changes? what stays the same?
Lionga
You give advice on startups, yet the two Startups mentioned raised lots of money and have not achieved any real success.

Those who can do, those who can't teach?

coderintherye
What do you think of the current efforts to go from quarterly to semiannual corporate reporting in the way it is playing out in the current administration?
0xbadcafebee
> how a handful of companies (like Costco[..]) have successfully been structured to resist gravity

"I came to (Jim Sinegal) once and I said, ‘Jim, we can’t sell this hot dog for a buck fifty," Jelineck recalled[..]. "We are losing our rear ends.’ And he said, ‘If you raise the effing hot dog, I will kill you."

That's not structure, that's leadership. They were about to change the price, but one guy at the top with authority and an opinion said no. You could say "it's structure" that there was one guy at the top with authority, but it still depends on him having the right opinion. You need both a good structure and an unwaveringly idealistic (and correct) leader.

iancmceachern
And leadership that respects and "gets" it's customer base. Customers that feel respected and who genuinely feel like the company they are supporting is in their corner are the most rabidly loyal. If you build a customer base like that, and keep respecting them, the problem solves itself.
madaxe_again
So many businesspeople can’t tell the difference between a value-add and a profit centre.

It isn’t about being idealistic, it’s just about understanding what makes people tick, and how to best get them to part with their money - and understanding that a business is not one dimensional.

hmokiguess
I've read The Lean Startup during undergrad and it was a bible to me at the time, thank you for your work, you got me into startup culture in a place where everyone else did not support of it.

One question I have for you is on finances, I think that still remains an afterthought in startup hustle culture, and perhaps even by design, I feel like the system is designed so that VCs keep winning and founders rarely get the exit they deserve. What is your take on that?

throwaway132448
Why do you anthropomorphize companies? Is it to absolve individuals of responsibility?

> We've all experienced watching a company we love or admire be warped and broken beyond recognition; until it's a husk of its former self, or worse. I wanted to understand why. And I wanted to know what all of us can do to stop that from happening.