Eric Ries on the Path of the Successful Entrepreneur

Companies that have risen to the top of the business world appear to be far-removed from their startup days, and to an extent, they are.

But while they may take on a different form today, how they reached that point should be of note to entrepreneurs. These companies didn’t become multi-billion-dollar enterprises overnight. Far from it. As startup consultant and author Eric Ries explains, it was a long road for many, and all of them started with a small idea and a big dream.

That’s how nearly every startup story begins: with an idea. It hasn’t been scaled yet and only the basics have been made available to facilitate its growth. In this short video, Ries cites late Apple CEO Steve Jobs as a perfect example. Jobs’s first prototype wasn’t a gleaming iPad. It was a bare-bones homebrew computer that attracted a very small market. Yet, that’s precisely where he began his startup.

For more from Ries, watch the full video, and check out our recent Q&A interview on the lean startup methodology.