Eric Ries in Amsterdam; the highlights

03 Mar Eric Ries in Amsterdam; the highlights

Yesterday was the day that Eric Ries, a world renowned entrepreneur, mostly known for igniting the ‘lean start-up’ movement, arrived in Amsterdam after a long flight from his home-town San Francisco to give an inspiring speech and work-shop about the lean start-up philosophy. We at Holland Fintech were, of course, eager to see one of the most successful start-up entrepreneurs live on stage, so we joined this much anticipated event. We can thank an Amsterdam based start-up called Live on Demand that made this possible by executing a great crowdsourcing effort.

Live on Demand founder Thijs Sprangers gave a prelude by explaining how their innovation works; say someone wants a specific artist or speaker to give a show in his or her city. He or she then uploads the request on the Live on Demand online platform. People who see the request can then decide whether they want to join the event by purchasing a ticket. If enough people give the go ahead, the artist gets a formal invitation with the guarantee that a certain number of people will show up (because they already bought a ticket). Very innovative, very effective. Yesterday showed, because the spacious room was packed with 800 start-up founders, free-lancers, students, employees from big corporate companies and government officials. As a matter of fact, this event was the biggest crowd-funded event ever!

Speaking of government officials, Neelie Kroes, who leads the Startup Delta initiative as a Special Envoy, was invited on stage too to speak about the importance for the Netherlands to become the 3^rd most prominent place in the world for start-ups to flourish. She highlighted the upcoming trend of the ‘internet of things’, pointed out the vital role of people who take on risk (“if you didn’t fail, you didn’t take enough risk”) and mentioned that the first international company in the world called the VOC from the 17^th century could be a role model.

Then the main act entered the stage: Eric Ries. He started with a witty joke about politicians talking about taking risk J. Eric Ries is a very gifted speaker, not only is he very knowledgeable, he also has plenty of anecdotes and a good sense of humor to capture and keep audience attention. He elaborated on a couple of key questions one should ask in the early stages of a lean program; who is accountable for what? How to measure success? Who is exactly the customer?

People should think as a scientist, and should think of a start-up as an experiment. In that regard, start-ups, or experiments if you will, are not only for the smart kid working on something amazing in a garage. No, big corporate companies can embrace the lean start-up methodology too. This will only work if management takes (inevitable) failure into account; “achieving failure is successfully executing a bad plan”. What’s more, even the government can adopt this wisdom; who wouldn’t want the government to be leaner and smarter? Nowadays, Eric Ries is hired as a consultant at multinational companies like General Electric to tone down the bureaucracy and introduce innovation. Eric Ries also pointed out, and rightfully so, that the more boring subjects like accounting should not be forgotten. ‘Innovation accounting’ is an often overlooked aspect in executing lean management.

This is of course a very comprehensive overview of his speech; he also shared his thoughts on issues like the minimally viable product, how to best reward people, validation, leadership, etc. The audience also got the opportunity to ask a few questions. For more more insights go to his blog

After the lunch break, 4 companies also got the opportunity to speak about their lean experiences: Peerby, Twoodoo, Sanoma and Philips. They all share their stories about the challenges they face. It was a good mix, because as said, lean is not only for start-ups. The representatives could ask Eric Ries, who was sitting front-row, for advice. You can really tell that Eric Ries has so much to say, because his responses took like 5 minutes each.

During the afternoon, participants could join roundtable sessions with companies like Sanoma, Tomtom, USG people, etc to have a good and open discussion of what we learned today. The day ended with a ‘borrel’, so people could connect while enjoying a drink and a snack.

In sum, it was a very educational and entertaining (always a great combination) event. It certainly inspired to study and practice the lean start-up philosophy, a philosophy we at Holland Fintech hold in high regard. Don’t forget to join our next meet-up on Friday the 13^th!