Eric Ries House Visit

Shaan tells a story about visiting Eric Ries (author of The Lean Startup) at his house in San Francisco and receiving crucial startup advice.

"I got to meet Eric at his house in San Francisco. Nicest guy, but wasn't just pleasantries - he was so helpful. I told him about our big launch plans and he immediately said 'Don't do the big launch.' He explained that with a big launch, you're going to take the worst version of the product you've ever made, that you have no idea if there's demand for, and completely blow your wad telling everybody how great this thing is.

Then when I talked about pivoting our company, he gave me this powerful advice: 'You need to take your old idea, bring it to town square, and shoot it in the head.' He explained that your team will be confused unless you explicitly tell them 'Hey, all the stuff I've been saying for 2 years is changing. The old assumptions turned out to be wrong.'

He used Instagram as an example - when they pivoted from Burbn, they explicitly said 'This location-based check-ins thing, we're not doing that anymore. Locations suck. We used to say location means everything, now it means nothing. It's photos with filters.'

Most founders ask for advice but really what we're asking for is affirmation of things we want to hear. Eric punched me in the nose with direct advice I couldn't ignore. Most people won't put themselves out there like that - it didn't help him, I never bumped into him again, but he went out on a limb to be direct with me and I really appreciated that."