Erik Ris

Eric Ries is an American entrepreneur, a pioneer of the “Lean Startup” movement, and a well-known blogger in the high-tech business field.

In 2001, Eric Ries graduated from Yale University with a bachelor’s degree in computer science.

As a student, Ries published the book Black Art of Java Game Programming.

While studying at the university, Ries founded Catalyst Recruiting, an online forum for university students that made it possible to connect with potential employers.

At the same time, he served on the advisory boards of two business incubators and a venture fund in New Haven, Connecticut.

To take care of his new company, Ries took academic leave; however, due to his lack of business experience and the burst dot-com bubble, Catalyst Recruiting soon ceased to exist.

Ries later noted that this was fortunate, since the company shut down before his academic leave ended and he was able to return to his studies.

Career. There, Inc. After graduating in 2001, Ries moved to Silicon Valley and began working as a programmer at There, Inc. Until 2003, he worked on the 3D Virtual World There.com project. The project failed, and in 2004 Ries founded IMVU Inc..

IMVU Inc. In 2004, Eric Ries, together with one of the founders of There.com, Will Harvey, founded IMVU, a 3D social network in which users could communicate and play games using personalized avatars.

While working at IMVU, Eric Ries met Steve Blank, a successful Silicon Valley entrepreneur and one of IMVU’s investors. Blank invested in the company on the condition that its executives take his entrepreneurship course at the University of California. The knowledge Ries gained helped him develop IMVU’s products.

As chief technical officer of IMVU, Ries wrote and supervised all of the product code. He also tested alternative versions of the product by attracting users through Google AdWords and measuring the number of downloads.

Since major companies such as Microsoft, Yahoo!, and AOL were already present in the instant messaging market, IMVU’s goal was to combine the mass appeal of messaging with the high