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I should also point out why the "Lean Startup" is more relevant than ever: Theranos. (The other story trending in hacker news). After reading Bad Blood, I am n

I should also point out why the "Lean Startup" is more relevant than ever: Theranos. (The other story trending in hacker news). After reading Bad Blood, I am not convinced that Holmes (at least initially) intended to perpetrate a fraud. She may have believed it was possible to produce the machine she dreamed off, and it was a question of putting in the R&D. (It still might be possible). If this is the case, the "lean" methodology would have saved her if she had just started out small and focused on developing the tech first. Saved in the sense of convincing her it did not work and that it was best to return the rest of the money. There was a time when the distribution deals were signed and the tech wasn't read and the deals were used to raise cash that really must have felt like things have gone too far.

village-idiot 8y ago
An interesting theory. I don’t know what to think about Holmes. At this point she thinks she just did what every other (male) startup founder did, and that she’s getting singled out for punishment when plenty of other startups over promised and under delivered. She doesn’t seem to grasp that flopping on some shitty social media site is far lower stakes than lying about medical issues, which makes me question her ethics and grasp on reality.
- startupdiscuss 8y ago
  I have not seen her current response to the situation. Does she hold out examples? I don't know of any under delivery of this magnitude. (I think even webvan peaked at $4.8 Billion in value. It eventually had peak sales of $178million).
  - village-idiot 8y ago
    I don’t have the exact quote in front of me, I’m recalling this from Preet Bharara’s podcast. You’d have to inflation adjust those numbers to be fair, but I suspect that you’re right in calling this one of the biggest under deliveries in a while.
mediaman 8y ago
Theranos's problem seems to be that they (especially Holmes) would not bend on technical issues that would have allowed them to build a functioning product. It sounds like if they had allowed the machine to be a little bigger, and if they had compromised on being able to take a little more blood (instead of the one drop they had been marketing), they could have had a real machine that would produce reliable results. Then they could have iterated and continued the push to miniaturize what they already had commercialized. Instead, Holmes insisted on a sample size that technically they couldn't achieve reliable results with, and when faced with the decision of compromising on spec to get something to work, or release something that didn't work and then lie about it, she chose the latter. If anything, a "lean" approach (to the extent possible with medical testing hardware) would have benefited them.
- startupdiscuss 8y ago
  That is a good point on the size of the machine. It would be crazy -- I mean in a cosmic way, not talking about any particular person -- if it were possible to get a decent MVP if it were slightly larger and took in slightly more blood. The book implied this might have been possible, but it was not clear to me.
Reedx 8y ago
> After reading Bad Blood, I am not convinced that Holmes (at least initially) intended to perpetrate a fraud. She may have believed it was possible to produce the machine she dreamed off, and it was a question of putting in the R&D. (It still might be possible). I suspect that's the case too. Especially considering she didn't take money off the table. It seems she was completely invested in the idea of fake it till you make it. Dangerously so.
im_down_w_otp 8y ago
It's hard to find investors who will invest in just "the tech". Even in cases where it's clear to basically everyone that the structure of the market, the profile of the customer, and the size or depth of the problem necessitate pursuing a technology strategy and not a product strategy out of the gate (and possibly for a long, long time). Even at early-stage investment, if you don't have a really specific product narrative doing a sound-bite sized thing, you'll get a lot of feedback about how it all needs to be very simple and you need to have a specific product definition. This is not a defense if Theranos, but rather just some insight into the ways that VC preferences, pattern-matching, and fairly simplistic capacity to vet anything through a "pitch" tend to distort how one goes about raising money and what one can reasonably raise money for. There probably needs to be some increased diversity in funding sources for "hard tech" problems. The issue I've always had with the concept of "MVP" is that it trivializes the problem space you can reasonably pursue, and collapses all the solutions into something you can throw together quickly, which also seriously distorts the incentives for rigor around making anything. It probably works fine for another Daily-Lifestyle-Thing-as-a-Service/App, but it seems less likely to work for something like creating a new sensor for an avionics system.

village-idiot 8y ago

An interesting theory. I don’t know what to think about Holmes. At this point she thinks she just did what every other (male) startup founder did, and that she’s getting singled out for punishment when plenty of other startups over promised and under delivered. She doesn’t seem to grasp that flopping on some shitty social media site is far lower stakes than lying about medical issues, which makes me question her ethics and grasp on reality.

startupdiscuss 8y ago
I have not seen her current response to the situation. Does she hold out examples? I don't know of any under delivery of this magnitude. (I think even webvan peaked at $4.8 Billion in value. It eventually had peak sales of $178million).
- village-idiot 8y ago
  I don’t have the exact quote in front of me, I’m recalling this from Preet Bharara’s podcast. You’d have to inflation adjust those numbers to be fair, but I suspect that you’re right in calling this one of the biggest under deliveries in a while.

mediaman 8y ago

Theranos's problem seems to be that they (especially Holmes) would not bend on technical issues that would have allowed them to build a functioning product. It sounds like if they had allowed the machine to be a little bigger, and if they had compromised on being able to take a little more blood (instead of the one drop they had been marketing), they could have had a real machine that would produce reliable results. Then they could have iterated and continued the push to miniaturize what they already had commercialized. Instead, Holmes insisted on a sample size that technically they couldn't achieve reliable results with, and when faced with the decision of compromising on spec to get something to work, or release something that didn't work and then lie about it, she chose the latter. If anything, a "lean" approach (to the extent possible with medical testing hardware) would have benefited them.

startupdiscuss 8y ago
That is a good point on the size of the machine. It would be crazy -- I mean in a cosmic way, not talking about any particular person -- if it were possible to get a decent MVP if it were slightly larger and took in slightly more blood. The book implied this might have been possible, but it was not clear to me.

Reedx 8y ago

> After reading Bad Blood, I am not convinced that Holmes (at least initially) intended to perpetrate a fraud. She may have believed it was possible to produce the machine she dreamed off, and it was a question of putting in the R&D. (It still might be possible). I suspect that's the case too. Especially considering she didn't take money off the table. It seems she was completely invested in the idea of fake it till you make it. Dangerously so.

im_down_w_otp 8y ago

It's hard to find investors who will invest in just "the tech". Even in cases where it's clear to basically everyone that the structure of the market, the profile of the customer, and the size or depth of the problem necessitate pursuing a technology strategy and not a product strategy out of the gate (and possibly for a long, long time). Even at early-stage investment, if you don't have a really specific product narrative doing a sound-bite sized thing, you'll get a lot of feedback about how it all needs to be very simple and you need to have a specific product definition. This is not a defense if Theranos, but rather just some insight into the ways that VC preferences, pattern-matching, and fairly simplistic capacity to vet anything through a "pitch" tend to distort how one goes about raising money and what one can reasonably raise money for. There probably needs to be some increased diversity in funding sources for "hard tech" problems. The issue I've always had with the concept of "MVP" is that it trivializes the problem space you can reasonably pursue, and collapses all the solutions into something you can throw together quickly, which also seriously distorts the incentives for rigor around making anything. It probably works fine for another Daily-Lifestyle-Thing-as-a-Service/App, but it seems less likely to work for something like creating a new sensor for an avionics system.