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His MVP argument confuses me. I short, he suggests lying to your visitors, by making a lead capture page that looks like the product already works. He does not

His MVP argument confuses me. I short, he suggests lying to your visitors, by making a lead capture page that looks like the product already works. He does not address the ethics, the karma or simply the bad business reputation of lying about minor details such as "it works". This surprises me.

saagarjha 7y ago
I believe the post is satirical, although with some of the points it’s a bit hard to tell.
- skrebbel 7y ago
  It's pretty well executed satire, if it is. That said I thought the "is there a conference for it" is a pretty nice definition of what a niche is (at least in B2B land).
stopads 7y ago
Yeah this piece really hit the peak of "lie to everybody and just keep pushing forward on bullshit" startup sentiment that was really big 10 years. It was a really dark time, we're still cleaning up those messes today.
- icedchai 7y ago
  What makes you think that sort of BS ever really stopped?
mattmanser 7y ago
It's a common tactic and very sensible. Figure out if you can sell first, if you can't, don't bother. If that bothers you, you probably shouldn't be in the game of running a business at all. If absolute truth is more important to you than a few fibs or a little half-truth, you'll find it difficult to run a successful business. It's the difference between spending $10,000s making something to find out you're incapable of selling anything, or not. I've made this mistake, twice too, getting too wrapped up in the dev. It's stupid to do it that way round. I wasted a lot of money, and have got burnt by a business partner that simply couldn't sell what we made despite making all the right noises.
- quirkot 7y ago
  I guess the question is: if your leading point is that lying is OK and necessary, why should we believe anything in this comment at all? edit: which is why it's critical to be honest with your customers at all times.
- skrebbel 7y ago
  > If absolute truth is more important to you than a few fibs or a little half-truth, you'll find it difficult to run a successful business. To be frank, we're doing quite well so far.
- omarhaneef 7y ago
  I think that makes sense if 0 people sign up or 10,000 do and you can now work to deliver the product. But what happens if only one person signs up? You've proved it doesn't work, and yet you have to deliver your app to this one person, right?
  - bachmeier 7y ago
    I think the part about "fibs" includes not delivering.
    - jdironman 7y ago
      So, it's a kickstarter, without the kickstart if you only have 1 person sign up. Theres plenty of successful kickstarter projects, also plenty that did not deliver, so I wonder about the harm of being up front about intentions? In open source a lot do it for the passion of the work. They accept donations, some move to a paid model, but usually they are honest with their users and those users are retained more often than not. It depends on what is driving the company. Profits or passion.
- bachmeier 7y ago
  "If absolute truth is more important to you than a few fibs or a little half-truth, you'll find it difficult to run a successful business." Another example of free advice being worth what you pay for it. As someone that buys things, I don't recommend this advice. (Maybe if the person that posted it had some evidence beyond a short story it would be different.) "I wasted a lot of money, and have got burnt by a business partner that simply couldn't sell what we made despite making all the right noises." Just throwing this out - maybe the inability to sell is correlated with the first part of your post.
francisofascii 7y ago
Right. I get that is is good to gauge customer interest before investing the time to build the product, but be honest about if it works yet. This may be unfair but it sounds like something out of the Theranos playbook.
quickthrower2 7y ago
Yes I’d personally prefer to talk face to face with some people, be honest and try to get a pre order for the thing I’m building. No need to lie and still this is technically a minimal viable proposition
PragmaticPulp 7y ago
This blog post was written in 2011, when the book “The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9–5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich” was a best seller. The book was a guide to convincing your boss to let you work from home so you could have more time to build a side hustle business. One of the main premises of the book was to validate your side hustle with fake Google ads to see how many people clicked on your product. This was a very trendy idea at the time. I knew several people who tried this trick, and it backfired for most of them. In the real world, customers are very averse to potential scams on the internet. They quickly notice if a company is pretending to be something it’s not, and they remember that the company was misleading for a long, long time. The modern equivalent is a landing page that captures the user’s email to wait for an invite to the “current private beta”. Making a webpage that pretends to crash on checkout as this blog author suggests, is a terrible way to retain user interest and build confidence in your brand.
- frandroid 7y ago
  > customers are very averse to potential scams on the internet. They quickly notice if a company is pretending to be something it’s not, and they remember that the company was misleading for a long, long time. You mean all 30 people who clicked on your ad? It's not like you're throwing $30K in AdWords for this...
draw_down 7y ago
Success-win-growth guys usually elide a discussion of ethics around things like that, so I’m not surprised.
dkarl 7y ago
I worked on a project in 2000 where I was using third-party simulation software to demo some of the capabilities of our product. It looked pretty cool. I couldn't figure out why Powerpoint slides wouldn't cut it, but whatever, it was fun work. I was green, and the entire business side was a mystery to me. Then the Harvard MBA who initiated the project showed me what he had done. He had used a Windows binary editor to rebrand the third-party simulation software to make it look like ours. "If the product is successful we'll contact them and work out something." Product? He didn't outright tell me, but he said enough for me to realize he was going to present it as a GUI management tool for our software to a company they were trying to make a sale to. I was already on my way out the door at that company, so I just kept my head down. I do know the demo never happened, so maybe somebody with better sense reigned him in.
- lubujackson 7y ago
  Not too dissimilar to how Bill Gates "created" and sold DOS before it existed. Clearly misrepresentative and unethical, but not idiotic from a ruthless business perspective.
  - swiley 7y ago
    > but not idiotic from a ruthless business perspective. What the hell kind of excuse is that?

saagarjha 7y ago

I believe the post is satirical, although with some of the points it’s a bit hard to tell.

skrebbel 7y ago
It's pretty well executed satire, if it is. That said I thought the "is there a conference for it" is a pretty nice definition of what a niche is (at least in B2B land).

stopads 7y ago

Yeah this piece really hit the peak of "lie to everybody and just keep pushing forward on bullshit" startup sentiment that was really big 10 years. It was a really dark time, we're still cleaning up those messes today.

icedchai 7y ago
What makes you think that sort of BS ever really stopped?

mattmanser 7y ago

It's a common tactic and very sensible. Figure out if you can sell first, if you can't, don't bother. If that bothers you, you probably shouldn't be in the game of running a business at all. If absolute truth is more important to you than a few fibs or a little half-truth, you'll find it difficult to run a successful business. It's the difference between spending $10,000s making something to find out you're incapable of selling anything, or not. I've made this mistake, twice too, getting too wrapped up in the dev. It's stupid to do it that way round. I wasted a lot of money, and have got burnt by a business partner that simply couldn't sell what we made despite making all the right noises.

quirkot 7y ago
I guess the question is: if your leading point is that lying is OK and necessary, why should we believe anything in this comment at all? edit: which is why it's critical to be honest with your customers at all times.
skrebbel 7y ago
> If absolute truth is more important to you than a few fibs or a little half-truth, you'll find it difficult to run a successful business. To be frank, we're doing quite well so far.
omarhaneef 7y ago
I think that makes sense if 0 people sign up or 10,000 do and you can now work to deliver the product. But what happens if only one person signs up? You've proved it doesn't work, and yet you have to deliver your app to this one person, right?
- bachmeier 7y ago
  I think the part about "fibs" includes not delivering.
  - jdironman 7y ago
    So, it's a kickstarter, without the kickstart if you only have 1 person sign up. Theres plenty of successful kickstarter projects, also plenty that did not deliver, so I wonder about the harm of being up front about intentions? In open source a lot do it for the passion of the work. They accept donations, some move to a paid model, but usually they are honest with their users and those users are retained more often than not. It depends on what is driving the company. Profits or passion.
bachmeier 7y ago
"If absolute truth is more important to you than a few fibs or a little half-truth, you'll find it difficult to run a successful business." Another example of free advice being worth what you pay for it. As someone that buys things, I don't recommend this advice. (Maybe if the person that posted it had some evidence beyond a short story it would be different.) "I wasted a lot of money, and have got burnt by a business partner that simply couldn't sell what we made despite making all the right noises." Just throwing this out - maybe the inability to sell is correlated with the first part of your post.

francisofascii 7y ago

Right. I get that is is good to gauge customer interest before investing the time to build the product, but be honest about if it works yet. This may be unfair but it sounds like something out of the Theranos playbook.

quickthrower2 7y ago

Yes I’d personally prefer to talk face to face with some people, be honest and try to get a pre order for the thing I’m building. No need to lie and still this is technically a minimal viable proposition

PragmaticPulp 7y ago

This blog post was written in 2011, when the book “The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9–5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich” was a best seller. The book was a guide to convincing your boss to let you work from home so you could have more time to build a side hustle business. One of the main premises of the book was to validate your side hustle with fake Google ads to see how many people clicked on your product. This was a very trendy idea at the time. I knew several people who tried this trick, and it backfired for most of them. In the real world, customers are very averse to potential scams on the internet. They quickly notice if a company is pretending to be something it’s not, and they remember that the company was misleading for a long, long time. The modern equivalent is a landing page that captures the user’s email to wait for an invite to the “current private beta”. Making a webpage that pretends to crash on checkout as this blog author suggests, is a terrible way to retain user interest and build confidence in your brand.

frandroid 7y ago
> customers are very averse to potential scams on the internet. They quickly notice if a company is pretending to be something it’s not, and they remember that the company was misleading for a long, long time. You mean all 30 people who clicked on your ad? It's not like you're throwing $30K in AdWords for this...

draw_down 7y ago

Success-win-growth guys usually elide a discussion of ethics around things like that, so I’m not surprised.

dkarl 7y ago

I worked on a project in 2000 where I was using third-party simulation software to demo some of the capabilities of our product. It looked pretty cool. I couldn't figure out why Powerpoint slides wouldn't cut it, but whatever, it was fun work. I was green, and the entire business side was a mystery to me. Then the Harvard MBA who initiated the project showed me what he had done. He had used a Windows binary editor to rebrand the third-party simulation software to make it look like ours. "If the product is successful we'll contact them and work out something." Product? He didn't outright tell me, but he said enough for me to realize he was going to present it as a GUI management tool for our software to a company they were trying to make a sale to. I was already on my way out the door at that company, so I just kept my head down. I do know the demo never happened, so maybe somebody with better sense reigned him in.

lubujackson 7y ago
Not too dissimilar to how Bill Gates "created" and sold DOS before it existed. Clearly misrepresentative and unethical, but not idiotic from a ruthless business perspective.
- swiley 7y ago
  > but not idiotic from a ruthless business perspective. What the hell kind of excuse is that?