Me, Inc. Page 2

ERIC RIES

  Silicon Valley entrepreneur and author credited with pioneering the lean start-up movement

  In 1958, when I was eight and a half years old, I found myself on a plane with my mother, headed for New York. My uncle Joe had sent tickets for us to come to America. My mother told me not to worry, we were just going two stops and then we’d get off.

  This was my first airplane ride, in a four-engine El Al Israel Airlines propeller plane. It was a bumpy ride and I kept throwing up. But I was surprised and delighted to find that you could just sit there and people brought food to you in your seat. I had never experienced that.

  I still love that about planes.

  After we landed at LaGuardia Airport, I was awed by the sheer size of everything. Everything I saw in America seemed bigger than I could have ever imagined. The buildings. The cars. The portions of food. The size of the people. Everything was big.

  After our arrival, we moved into my beloved aunt Magda and uncle Larry’s basement in their house in Flushing, Queens. Uncle Larry was my mother’s brother. I was amazed that they had a refrigerator filled with food. Imagine that. It wasn’t a restaurant, yet they had a refrigerator with food in it? I had never seen such a thing before. I couldn’t fathom that they owned their own house, and had a car, and a bike, and a refrigerator full of food.

  I was also introduced to Cocoa Marsh, a chocolate syrup, which I immediately fell in love with. I was even more impressed by a jar of jam. When my aunt Magda saw how awed I was by that jar of jam, she gave me a spoon and said to me in Hungarian (since she didn’t speak Hebrew and I couldn’t speak a word of English at the time), “Go on, taste it.”

  I thought she meant I could have all of it. So I ate the whole jar with a spoon.

  My cousins Eva and Linda and my aunt Magda and uncle Larry and my mother were all laughing. I didn’t know why. All I knew was that in my young life, I had never tasted something so wonderful.

  And then there was Wonder Bread. Oh my Lord, how I loved that bread. To me, it was like cake. I would often eat the bread with nothing on it. And after I discovered ketchup, there was no stopping me. I ate ketchup sandwiches, which consisted of a big ketchup smear between two slices of Wonder Bread. I put ketchup on everything: on tuna fish, on scrambled eggs—everything. I still do.

  Aunt Magda and Uncle Larry allowed my mother and me to live in their basement for two years, and I will forever be grateful. In our time there, I experienced many things for the first time: riding a bike, brushing my teeth, bathing indoors in a bathtub. And for the first time, I sat on a toilet. This was also when I was introduced to toilet paper; I no longer had to use rags to wipe. The first time I used toilet paper, I threw it in the wastebasket. I didn’t know you were supposed to flush it down the toilet bowl.

  Every day was an amazing experience. The streets were filled with cars and people. The houses were neatly lined up next to each other. Everyone seemed happy and well fed. It was normal to see kids my age walking around with ice cream cones in their hands as if it were a banality. That treasure, an ice cream cone, which before I had worked so hard to attain, was old hat to these kids. It was humdrum. This is the luxury of America. It’s all relative.

  The first time I walked to the end of the street where Aunt Magda and Uncle Larry lived, I was afraid to cross. The streets were filled with cars going every which way. I had never seen a traffic light, so I didn’t understand how one got to the other side. But when I saw people starting to walk across the street, I hurriedly followed them. And there, on the other side, I visited my first supermarket.

  To say that I was in awe wouldn’t do it justice. It was simply beyond anything I could have ever imagined. To me, it seemed like a city of food, with the crisscrossing aisles looking like streets filled with a level of abundance that was completely new to me. I had never imagined that you could choose from fifty different brands of coffee. In fact, I had never imagined that you could choose much of anything.

  When my mother and I visited her other brother, Uncle George, and his wife, Florence, I saw my first television set. It was a huge piece of furniture, perhaps four feet wide, with cabinet doors on each side and a big curved screen in the middle. It must have been evening news time, because I remember seeing a black-and-white close-up of the face of a man inside the box. I envisioned a man inside the box talking to us. All I could do was stare at the screen, amazed at the wonder of television.

  While visiting Uncle George and Aunt Florence, I wandered outside and walked down the street. At the corner, I was attracted to a striking bloodred metal structure. It wasn’t all that tall, and there seemed to be a lever. I reached up and pulled it.

  All hell broke loose. A bell began ringing like crazy. I stood frozen. Within a few seconds, I heard loud sirens coming toward me. I had never seen a street fire alarm before and I had never heard sirens, much less seen a fire truck. As I ran back toward Uncle George’s house, I came upon the longest, largest vehicle I had ever seen. It was painted bloodred, just like that metal structure that was now making so much noise. It was bigger than a bus. And it had two drivers, one in the front and one at the back. The sirens scared the daylights out of me. I ran back into Uncle George’s house and quietly sat in the corner, scared out of my mind. It sounds like an exaggeration, but I was truly an alien here. A stranger in a strange land.

  My mother was always a proud, independent woman. Although her brothers George and Larry both offered housing and help, she decided that she and I would have to move and get our own place. She refused to accept loans and always insisted on earning her own way. She taught me to be that way. Never a borrower be.

  To keep me off the streets, and before I had a mastery of the English language or knew anything about American culture, my mother moved us to Brooklyn. But she couldn’t afford to get us an apartment, so she enrolled me in religious studies at Yeshiva Torah Vadas at Third Street and Bedford Avenue in the Williamsburg section.

  It was a Jewish theological seminary, very conservative, and very entrenched in biblical studies. I was set up by the yeshiva to live with the Scheinlen family, who owned a bakery, while my mother lived with her brother Larry. They treated me as if I were a member of the family. I will forever be grateful to them for giving me a safe environment, and for giving my mother a chance to make some headway at work—she refused to take a handout, even then.

  Yeshiva was hard. Six days a week, I would get up every morning at six, and would be at the yeshiva by seven thirty. We would start our day by praying at the temple, those of us who actually did pray. At eight thirty, we would begin studying American history, math, and English, and the rest of the day was spent studying the Bible. After 6 p.m., we would go back to yeshiva, eat our dinner, and then continue our Bible studies until 9:30 p.m.

  I was eight and a half years old when I saw Santa Claus for the first time, on a billboard advertising Kent cigarettes. At the time, I had never heard of Santa Claus or Christians or Jesus Christ. Santa had a beard, was smoking a cigarette, and had a furry hat on his head, so I assumed he was a Russian rabbi. And then I started hearing the story of Jesus and how he was also a Jew, and a rabbi as well, and that none of the people who worshipped him were Jews. And that he was God and the Son of God, and that there was a Holy Ghost.

  I was so mixed up. But I became interested in theology and different religious beliefs, so I started voraciously reading the New Testament and the Koran and other religious books. I learned about Islam and that it honored both Christians and Jews. I learned so much that now, when I meet religious zealots of all kinds, they find it very difficult to make their points, because I can quote psalm and verse right back at them. (Just a digression. Pride has always been my favorite sin.)

  America was a whole new world that I could never have imagined, of different peoples with different beliefs, and all of them lived together. I was thrilled to find that America welcomed all sorts of people and gave immigrants the same rights as native-born Americans. This was astonishing to me, and i
t’s one of the reasons why I love America to this day with all my heart.

  I could read anything I wanted to. I could speak my mind. And my mother and I were safe, with no Nazis trying to kill us, no countries surrounding our border that wanted us to disappear—this freedom of expression was not, unlike where I came from, under constant threat of violent reprisal from a war you could literally hitch a ride to in a passing car.

  Absorbing my new surroundings, I started to feel strong. I started to feel a sense of being. Some of that came from watching television. I saw that Superman could come from another planet, and still rise to greatness. I felt like—well, Superman. My self-esteem grew. I felt like I was somebody. Because America gave me the right to be somebody. What America had, was a “nothing is impossible” mind-set. You could see it on people’s faces as they went off to work, and you could feel it when you watched TV and saw people flying through the air, and deflecting bullets. You could smell it. It was all around you. And the heroes who were championed were diverse in their origins. They need not have come from America—like Superman, who hailed from Krypton, and later on the Beatles, who hailed from England. From my young perspective, heroism seemed to be a meritocracy in a melting pot.

  America taught me that no one is better than anyone else. And that, no matter the difference in your skin color, your accent, or your religious beliefs, no one has the right to make you feel less than what you are.

  No one.

  That feeling was one of the things that allowed me to forge ahead, and to never quit. This uniquely American spirit of individuality and pride allowed me to embrace the idea of entrepreneurship: that not only can you do anything—you can do everything. It’s also the feeling that allowed me, with my partner Paul Stanley, to form the band that we wanted to see, but never saw, onstage. But more about that band later.

  3

  Discovering TV and American Culture

  “Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.”

  BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

  founding father, inventor of the lightning rod, bifocal glasses and the Franklin stove, pioneer in the discovery of electricity, cowriter of the Declaration of Independence, first U.S. ambassador to France, and signer of the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution

  After a year, my mother and I were finally able to move into an apartment a few blocks away from the yeshiva, at 99 South Ninth Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Rent was thirty-five dollars a month.

  We had few luxuries at home, but we did have a small television set. Once we got that TV, it felt like the world had suddenly opened up to me. I watched the evening news. I watched Superman. I watched cartoons. I watched movies. I learned more from television than any other medium I had ever encountered. More than books. More than teachers and school.

  Television opened my mind to fantasy. To science fiction. To reality, through news coverage. Television was immediate. And Adventures of Superman in particular was a revelation—oh my God, that man is flying through the air, and he’s not from America—he’s an immigrant, just like me! What television did and continues to do for me is to show me that there are no limitations to the imagination. There is no idea that is too outlandish to pursue—in business, and in life.

  I’d spend my entire day at yeshiva, so I didn’t have much time for TV watching on weekdays. But on the weekend—yes, even on the Sabbath, which for us was observed on Saturday—I would be glued to the TV set, often all day and as late into the night as I was allowed to watch. I would stay up and watch the screen go blank when the four or five local stations we had in those days went off the air.

  Television also taught me how to speak with a “mid-Atlantic” accent. Mid-Atlantic is the sound of American English as spoken by newscasters around the country, whether they’re from the Deep South (where a newscaster would never say “y’all”) or the North (where a newscaster would never say “yo”).

  Having come to America not speaking a word of English, this fascinated me. So I started to mimic how TV newscasters spoke. I also noticed that they were always dressed better than the people on the street, and that they seemed to have an air of authority. So I learned to speak like them, without an accent, and even today, I’ve heard people comment that I sound like a TV broadcaster.

  In 1959, a year after our arrival in America, I remember going to a friend’s apartment in Brooklyn and seeing a tall pile of comic books stacked in a corner. I had never seen or heard of comic books before that day. At that point, I was still enrolled in yeshiva and trying to get a grasp of English, and I spoke what little English I knew with a deep Israeli accent. My friend and I sat down in front of this big stack, and he handed me my first comic book.

  I still remember it clearly. It was World’s Finest Comics, and it included Superman (the man I had seen flying through the air on television) and Batman. I was awed by the fact that these weren’t just regular people. They were extraordinary people, leading extraordinary lives. And there was always good and evil.

  I was hooked. I devoured comic books. I still do. So does the rest of the world, apparently. Comics, once a relatively small underground movement, are now recognized as an influential cultural and commercial force. Comic Con, held annually in San Diego, has grown from a one-day gathering attended by 145 people into a four-day event attracting hundreds of thousands of people, on a par with the Cannes Film Festival, and has inspired numerous spin-offs around the world.

  In fact, the cultural power of the world of comic books, fantasy, and sci-fi can be seen in its current influence on pop culture, inspiring multimillion-dollar franchises such as Star Wars, Superman, The Avengers, Avatar, and The Lord of the Rings. All of those blockbuster Hollywood franchises arose from the same world of fantasy, sci-fi, and comic books that once seemed “kid stuff.”

  That first World’s Finest comic book launched my love affair with comics. And as with any area that I become passionate about, I became voracious for the most minute trivia. I can quote you psalm and verse from the old testament of comic books. Off the top of my head, I know the history of the Hulk: the original gray Hulk, written by Stan Lee, drawn by Jack Kirby, and inked by Dick Ayers, which evolved into the green version, and then the red version, and I can tell you in which issues of The Incredible Hulk Steve Ditko took over art chores. Yes, the Spider-Man artist actually drew the Hulk for a while! And I can tell you all about Iron Man, who was likewise drawn by Jack Kirby and Dick Ayers, and I can tell you on which issues Don Heck later took over as artist. These were my modern myths, my Samsons, my Davids and Goliaths. These became my templates for good and evil, my archetypes of virtue.

  In point of fact, I originally started doing my trademark “rock on” hand gesture—usually referred to as the “devil horns,” which can now be seen in just about any sports stadium and rock concert around the world—in 1973 as an homage to Steve Ditko’s Dr. Strange, who used the hand gesture to invoke his Magicks (“may the dreaded Dormamu invoke his wrath upon thee”). When Ditko’s other creation, Spider-Man, shot his webbing from his wrist, the same hand gesture was used, but upside down.

  What’s more, I couldn’t have imagined in my wildest dreams that America would allow me to actually become a comic-book superhero. KISS comics was published by Marvel Comics in the late seventies and became their biggest-selling comic book—at $1.50 a copy, when other comic books sold for twenty-five cents. The KISS comic book was magazine size, not comic-book size, so that it could be racked next to Time and the like. I’m proud to say that I got to fight Dr. Doom and meet the Fantastic Four with my bandmates in the first issue.

  I also could never have imagined that someday I would have my own Simmons Comics line and the freedom to create my own comic-book characters and titles.

  But I’m getting ahead of myself.

  I was nine years old in 1959, and attending yeshiva six days a week. When I wasn’t in yeshiva studying, I was at the library, which was about three blocks from it. I was delighted
to find out that everything in the library was free. I didn’t understand the historical significance of that then, but I do now.

  For the first time in my life, I was in a place where the poorest of the poor and the richest of the rich have the same access to all information for free, on a level playing field. Without censorship. Without book burnings by the Nazis. Without being burned at the stake by those with different religious beliefs. Complete freedom and access to all information, art, and culture from around the world.

  Then and there, I promised myself that I would educate myself, and that I would never stop educating myself. It was my responsibility to keep learning. I would spend hours at the library on the weekends and read everything I could get my hands on. Books on dinosaurs. Books on history. I almost read the entire Encyclopaedia Britannica. And all for free.

  The reason I’m telling all of you this is that I want you to take this point to heart and make you understand that it’s your responsibility to educate yourself. It’s not important if you lack qualifications—go out and learn, and you will slowly amass qualification. No one is born qualified to do anything—it is all earned through hard work and education.

  I had my beloved books. I had comic books. I had television. These were all part of my self-education. What more could I possibly need? I suppose I was sheltered, but my mother only had my best interests at heart in sending me to yeshiva. She wanted me off the streets and safe from early morning until late at night, when she returned home from a hard day of work. She would be up by the crack of dawn and home by seven at night, making the trek from Jackson Heights to Brooklyn every day to sew buttons for less than minimum wage. In that interim, she wanted to make sure I was safe—there were street gangs in our area, and being Jewish was not a popular thing. It has never been a popular thing. Arguably, it still isn’t.

  At the time, Williamsburg was a place where different cultures worked and lived together: Jews, African-Americans, Puerto Ricans, and others. In today’s parlance, you might call it a ghetto. Incidentally, most Americans are not aware that ghetto was originally a Venetian term used to describe the segregated neighborhoods where Jews lived. So this term has special significance to me.