Acclaim for THE LEAN STARTUP

Acknowledgments
I owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to the many people who have
helped make The Lean Startup a reality. First and foremost are the
thousands of entrepreneurs around the world who have tested these
ideas, challenged them, rened them, and improved them. Without
their relentless—and mostly unheralded—work every day, none of
this would be possible. Thank you.
Real startups involve failure, embarrassing mistakes, and constant
chaos. In my research for this book, I discovered that most
entrepreneurs and managers would prefer not to have the real story
of their daily work told in public. Therefore, I am indebted to the
courageous entrepreneurs who consented to have their stories told,
many of whom spent hours in tedious interviews and fact-checking
conversations. Thank you.
I have been grateful throughout my career to have mentors and
collaborators who have pushed me to accomplish more than I could
have on my own. Will Harvey is responsible for both recruiting me
to Silicon Valley in the rst place and for trusting me with the
opportunity to try out many of these ideas for the rst time at
IMVU. I am grateful to my other IMVU cofounders Marcus Gosling,
Matt Danzig, and Mel Guymon as well as the many IMVU
employees who did so much of the work I discussed. Of course,
none of that would have been possible without the support of
millions of IMVU customers over the years. I’d also like to thank
David Millstone, Ken Duda, Fernando Paiz, Steve Weinstein, Owen
Mahoney, Ray Ocampo, and Jason Altieri for their help along the
way.
We all owe Steve Blank a debt for the work he did developing