Eric Ries

Six months of salary. That's what Matt Mullenweg offered every Automattic employee to resign if they didn't believe in the company's direction. About 9% took the offer and left.

ProductCon NY yesterday. Packed room, and afterward hundreds of people lined up to sign books. What got me: most of them didn't want to talk about the new book. They wanted to tell me how The Lean Startup changed their work, or their life. Years later that still stops me cold. Incorruptible out May 26.

Full piece: nytimes.com/2026/05/16/bus…

From my NYT DealBook conversation with Sarah Kessler last weekend: "We built this financial system that has this gravitational pull down into mediocrity and to extraction and exploitation."

@Kseniase_ @ericries You can also watch this interview on YouTube: youtube.com/watch?v=ypHhsC…

.@Kseniase_ had a terrific conversation with @EricRies, who coined the term MVP, minimum viable product, and wrote The Lean Startup – the book that changed how startups build and test ideas. His new book, Incorruptible, asks a different question: how do you build companies that stay coherent, trustworthy, and human? Eric said that one of the ideas that deeply influenced this book came from @bchesky, founder of Airbnb: "At the end of the day, businesses are built on love and trust." Beneath all the talk about business, startups, power, values and capitalism was a much deeper question: What kind of world are builders creating right now? You should watch the full conversation. It feels so human →

First Bay Area stop for Incorruptible, in the books. Best Bookstore was packed a full week before the book is even out. Thank you Sarah Lacy and everyone who came. Everyone wants to change the world. The real question is whether you can build a company that does that and stays true to what it started as.

It's easier to spend down trust than to keep earning it. Once leadership starts, they find it hard to stop. From Incorruptible, out May 26.

Thank you for coming!

In our world of surveillance capitalism, our every action is tracked and benchmarked. But we can take back our agency, @ericries says. In his Long Now Talk he explained “willingness to pay," and how founders and consumers can use it to take back their power in the marketplace. Watch his full Talk here: na2.hubs.ly/H05j7jp0

Save the Date! Friday, 26 June 2026 #CXOTalk guest will be @EricRies, author of "Lean Startup" and now "Incorruptible." #Business #Leadeship #Incorruptible #Ethics

"If you're a founder, top executive, or board member, it's downright negligent not to read this book." Dan Heath, co-author of Made to Stick.

"It doesn't have to be this way" is basically a mantra at @AloeInc. h/t @MadisonMills22 for raising awareness of the justifiable backlash to the choices industry is making today. Tools we can trust is the whole thing. Why build anything else? Channeling @ericries for a moment: "Trustworthiness is the most underrated asset in all of business."

Finally watched @ericries on @lennysan 's pod and holy shit... what a breath of fresh air! Just pre-ordered Incorruptible Lean Startup changed the game (and my life) 15 yrs ago, and in our increasingly dark and corrupt world, I pray to God this ray of sunshine spreads, too

New episode drop 🎙️ And this one hits at the core of how we build, grow, and lead companies that actually last. I had the privilege of sitting down with @ericries, the mind behind The Lean Startup and Incorruptible, and one of the few voices willing to challenge how business really operates today. Here’s the business takeaway: Too many companies still run on opinions that “sound good.” But as Eric puts it: 👉 “’Sounds good’ are the two most dangerous words in entrepreneurship.” This problem shows up in enterprise strategy, product bets, marketing narratives, and even boardroom decisions. So what does better look like? In our conversation, we break it down: • Why evidence beats plausibility and how to build systems that force truth to surface • How AI is speeding up building, but not learning (and why that gap matters more than ever) • Why many organizations drift into value extraction instead of value creation • And what it really takes to build a company that can survive not just the next quarter… but the next 100 years One point that stuck with me: 👉 “Trust is by far the most underrated asset in all of business.” Yet most companies don’t treat it that way. They overpromise, optimize for short-term metrics, structure themselves in ways that make keeping promises almost impossible. And that’s where things break: with customers, employees, and the market. At @relayter , we see this every day in how companies communicate. If your message doesn’t match reality, your audience knows. If your experience doesn’t deliver value, no amount of storytelling will fix it. The shift is simple (but not easy): Build organizations that are: • Structured to learn • Designed to keep promises • Grounded in real customer experience Or, as Eric says: 👉 “Ethos is character. Integrity is structural strength.” That’s the foundation of companies that endure. If you’re building, leading, or rethinking how your company operates, this episode is worth your time. Listen here 👉 relayto.com/blog/s-02-ep-3…

🎧 Entrepreneur and author @ericries is wrestling with a question that many of the startups his book helped inspire have come to face: how to keep companies from losing their souls once money, scale and power arrive. hubs.li/Q04h5XtL0

Ben Horowitz is right: The Lean Startup was the most important book in the last 26 years. This will be the most important in the next few decades for sure. This conversation will be 🔥🔥🔥

If you CANNOT attend and want a personalized book buy it now and we'll get him to sign it for you tonight and will ship it tomorrow!! bestbookstore.com/item/EKOgAN1NF…

And as the late Tony Hsieh said, founder control is about MORE than just making money (this book is about how you keep control of your vision and mission) youtube.com/shorts/ROmbDWA…

As Ben Horowitz says here, Eric's first book was the biggest defining change in the entire startup world in the last 26 years youtube.com/shorts/Kzx0DP0…

TONIGHT! My bookstore in Downtown San Francisco is hosting @ericries FIRST Bay Area book launch for his new book INCORRUPTIBLE (a full WEEK before it comes out!!) events.humanitix.com/ries WHY should you care?