Eric Ries

In 2004, Ries left to join one of There.com’s founders, Will Harvey, in co-founding IMVU Inc., a social network. IMVU investor Steve Blank insisted that IMVU executives audit Blank’s entrepreneurship class at UC Berkeley. There Ries took Blank’s rapid customer feedback method, which Blank called “customer development,” and applied it at IMVU in combination with lean software development, testing alternative versions of the product and measuring download rates. IMVU rolled out the code for production nearly 50 times a day, an unusually fast development cycle. Ries also edited an earlier version of Blank’s book on customer development, “The Four Steps to Epiphany.”

IMVU aimed to integrate instant messaging with a high revenue per customer of traditional video games. Ries and Harvey did not seek a large amount of seed funding and launched a minimum viable product in six months. In 2006, the company raised $ 1 million in its first round of Seraph Group venture fundraising, eventually raising an additional 18 million. In 2008, after a new CEO joined IMVU, Ries resigned as CTO, remaining as an observer on the board.

After leaving IMVU, Ries joined venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins as a venture advisor, and six months later began advising startups independently.