You can't question either Eric Ries's or Steve Blank's chops as entrepreneurs. Read this piece we did at Xconomy, which includes the story of how Steve and Eric met and influenced one another: http://www.xconomy.com/san-francisco/2011/07/06/eric-ries-th...
Nice write-up, but their history/bio still doesn't give me any proof of their success in the startup world, outside of marketing lean startup stuff to other entrepreneurs, ironically. Taking advice from failed entrepreneurs is dangerous and a waste of time, I think.
I do think is Steve Blank is more legit, but not because he did multiple companies - if you worked on several venture-backed companies throughout your life but they all went nowhere, you must suck as an entrepreneur. I just looked up Epiphany and this answers my question, he founded it, did $71.5M in revenue, and it IPO'd, so Blank definitely knows what he's talking about: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epiphany,_Inc.
IMVU on the other thand had good traction and Eric Ries was VP of Engineering there, but what's happened to it since? Just looking it up on crunchbase: http://www.crunchbase.com/company/imvu - no big exit/big numbers or anything special like Epiphany?
And here's his LinkedIn profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/eries - it just doesn't show any blockbuster results as an entrepreneur, just a lot of advising/marketing/blogging.
That's part of what made Lean Startup frustrating. I know that Ries is the 'real deal', but the book ended up feeling like empty calories to me. Some good ideas, but all kind of vague.
I'm just not very read-up on their backgrounds, but which companies have they started and successfully built? Anyone know?
Are they currently working on any big idea now? I think it would be really interesting to see them try to apply their own theories into practice.