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All very good points, but Ben Horowitz actually completely missed the point of the Lean Start-up approach that people like Eric Ries are proposing. "Lean" does
by swombat 17y ago
All very good points, but Ben Horowitz actually completely missed the point of the Lean Start-up approach that people like Eric Ries are proposing.
"Lean" does not mean cheap. "Lean" means focused on progress, which is measured in validated learning about your customers.
Conflating "lean" with "cheap" serves no one. This article is arguing against cheap start-ups, not against lean start-ups.
This video includes some discussion, from Eric Ries, of how people are misunderstanding "lean" to mean "whatever they think will get the VCs to fund them": http://vimeo.com/9964506 http://vimeo.com/9964506
The whole "lean start-up" meme emerged with Eric Ries, as far as I know, so I think his definition of it is worth paying attention to.
- staunch 17y agoI don't think we need to leave it to Eric Ries to define what a lean startup is. It's been all the rage in the valley since at least when Flickr sold in 2005.
- swombat 17y agoHave you got some links about this?
- staunch 17y agoMost obvious one: March 2005: http://www.paulgraham.com/start.html http://www.paulgraham.com/start.html "Not Spending it". From Eric Ries: Sep 2008: http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2008/09/lean-startup.html http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2008/09/lean-startup.ht... "1. Lean in the sense of low-burn..."
- swombat 17y agoI don't see the word "lean" used once in that article by PG, so for now, I'm going to continue to assume that Eric Ries largely coined "lean start-up" and so has some ownership of the definition of it.
- shadowsun7 17y agoNot the idea, though. I can't remember anyone before PG arguing that startups today cost less to run, and so therefore should be funded lightly, and built for low cash-burn. In the essay above PG argues against "getting big fast". Which is a rough way of saying "stay lean". That being said - Horowitz seems to be limiting his advice to 'high-tech' startups. Note the penultimate paragraph. Not sure if the advice applies to startups in general.
- swombat 17y agoOk, so... Person A comes up with a term, let's call this term X. Other people start mis-defining X as something else, let's call it Y. Person B happened to talk about Y before person A talked about X. Therefore, your argument goes, person A's definition of X is wrong? Either I'm not following you, or your arguments are not following each other. Eric Ries doesn't advise against getting big fast. He advises to get big as fast as possible, where "possible" is defined by the product-market fit that's been reached.
- mbrubeck 17y agoAlso, Eric Ries himself says his "Lean Startup" methodology is adapted from the widely-adopted "Lean Manufacturing" methodology, which in turn is based on Toyota's TPS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lean_manufacturing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lean_manufacturing http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2009/12/what-is-lean-about-lean-startup.html http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2009/12/what-is-lean-ab... The fact that it is based on Toyota should be a clue that the "Lean" methodologies are not about size, but about efficiency. "Lean is centered around preserving value with less work" There are people using "Lean" as a new buzzword for small.