{"id":7861,"date":"2020-03-20T10:50:00","date_gmt":"2020-03-20T14:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=7861"},"modified":"2022-04-01T14:56:34","modified_gmt":"2022-04-01T18:56:34","slug":"imvu-history-eric-ries-lean-startup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/imvu-history-eric-ries-lean-startup\/","title":{"rendered":"IMVU History with Founder Eric Ries (Lean Startup)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The ideas in The Lean Startup came about when Eric got frustrated working on products that failed to get traction. As an engineer, he initially thought they failed due to technical problems, but this was never the right answer. In reality, they just spent a lot of time building things nobody wanted.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

So when he started his new company, IMVU, he wanted to try something different. One inspiration was Steve Blank\u2019s idea of Customer Development: a rigorous methodology for the business and marketing side of a startup. Another inspiration was Japan\u2019s lean manufacturing<\/a> systems, made famous by Toyota.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eric Ries applied these concepts to IMVU, which became a roaring success, with millions of users and $50 million in annual revenues in 2011. To help others succeed in innovation, Eric started the Lean Startup movement by publicizing the framework you\u2019ll learn about here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

History of IMVU with Eric Ries<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Early in IMVU’s history in 2004, Eric and his co-founders at IMVU wanted to build a social network around instant messaging (IM), which seemed attractive for its network effects<\/a> \u2013 the more people who join, the more valuable the network is, which makes even more people join.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because of network effects, the top IM products owned the vast majority of the industry. It was commonly accepted, almost obvious, that it\u2019d be extremely difficult to make a new IM network succeed.<\/strong> If you\u2019re already on a network with all your friends, you don\u2019t want to switch to a new network without all your friends joining too. Think about how hard it\u2019d be to build a rival to Facebook today \u2013 how would you get Facebook users to join your network when all their friends are on Facebook? Would they really want to join yet ANOTHER social network?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To avoid this problem, IMVU decided not to start their own new IM network. Instead, they built a new 3D video game layer on top<\/strong> of IM networks. Users would first join IMVU, a 3D virtual world where they could create avatars and buy virtual goods. Then they would connect their IM accounts and message people on their existing IM networks to join IMVU too. Critically, this meant users wouldn\u2019t have to switch to a whole new IM network \u2013 it already works with the IM networks they belong to. Ingenious!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In IMVU’s history, the IMVU team labored for 6 months on their prototype product. They worried constantly about details of their strategy \u2013 \u201chow many IM networks should we support? (over a dozen) How buggy can the prototype be? Will it make us look bad?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, with their pride on the line, they launched IMVU the product.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And no one joined. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

They thought it was a quality problem at first, so they worked on fixing bugs and adding features. This didn\u2019t budge the needle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, they decided to bring in potential users for interviews<\/strong>. This is where their epiphany happened. IMVU built the whole game around getting new users to bring in their friends from other IM networks…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The ideas in The Lean Startup came about when Eric got frustrated working on products that failed to get traction. As an engineer, he initially thought they failed due to technical problems, but this was never the right answer. In reality, they just spent a lot of time building things nobody wanted. So when he started his new company, IMVU, he wanted to try something different. One inspiration was Steve Blank\u2019s idea of Customer Development: a rigorous methodology for the business and marketing side of a startup. Another inspiration was Japan\u2019s lean manufacturing systems, made famous by Toyota. Eric Ries<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7871,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[78],"class_list":["post-7861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-lean-startup","","tg-column-two"],"yoast_head":"\nIMVU History with Founder Eric Ries (Lean Startup) - Shortform Books<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"What was IMVU's history? Who is its founder, and how did IMVU get started? 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