4 ms·

MVPs force founders to (1) talk to customers and (2) actually ship something. Most early-stage founders I meet are working in a vacuum. They have ideas, but no

by ekidd 15y ago

MVPs force founders to (1) talk to customers and (2) actually ship something. Most early-stage founders I meet are working in a vacuum. They have ideas, but no way to validate those ideas against reality. Mostly, they're just wasting time on half-baked visions of world domination. The game doesn't start until you ask a customer for money. It's a bit like whitewater kayaking: You can float around all day looking at the rapids, but eventually you've got to let the current suck you downstream towards the waves and rocks. Now, maybe in Scoble's world, the rules are different. He sees so many startups that anything less than perfection on the first try is a failure. But this suggests that Scoble's market is getting saturated—perhaps we already have enough mobile/social/local apps for tech bloggers? Maybe it's time to listen to patio11, and find markets where any solution at all will make users climb across their desks with a checkbook in hand.

patio11 15y ago
It takes an awful lot of work to be the sixth most impressive thing Scoble (or the New York Times, or Techcrunch, or $PICK_A_GATEKEEPER) will see this week. It takes much, much less work to offer a better user experience than a) an Excel spreadsheet sent over email, b) having your office manager act as the endpoint to a REST API, or c) doing anything involving actual paper. These are frequently the competition in underserved markets. There's a million fun, valuable, important problems to solve out there which you go grow old and die without ever reading about on a Valley blog.
deleted 15y ago
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DanielRibeiro 15y ago
Couldn't agree more. What many people fail to realize is that MVP is not about succeeding. It is about failing! If most startups fail, and your idea is most likely to fail, the best way to find something that works is to fail, pivot, and fail again, until you get something people want. The MVP entices this fail/pivot loop to happen as fast as possible. And Scobble is right! If you are still on the failing phase, you shouldn't be seeking attention. Failing silently makes the whole experience less traumatic. And then we can move on to refraiming fail fast to learn fast.
9oliYQjP 15y ago
Isn't Scoble famous for being the guy who essentially took Microsoft, then facing uncertain times because of lack of direction, and suggest that one of their top priorities be to embrace employee blogging at all levels? It's the early 2000s and in the midst of unprecedented competition on all fronts -- everything from the iPod, to the LAMP stack (and its brethren), to Google -- he managed to convince Microsoft to get their employees to take what was essentially their 20% time and apply it not to a concerted defensive product response. But instead, he convinced them that their best strategy was to blog about wtf they were working on with Longhorn instead of, you know, preparing some voice recognition demos that actually didn't screw up because of an echo in the auditorium and threaten to kill (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1123221217782777472 http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1123221217782777472). Bravo, the guy is really convincing. But he's a marketer and his opinions should be sandboxed as such. He's right, the bar is really really really damn high now. But he has hasn't a clue on what it takes to get your chin up above the bar. I see a fat guy at a chin up bar and see somebody who, if they ate healthier and did some exercise, could do ten chin-ups easily. He sees a fat guy who shouldn't even bother to try.

by ekidd 15y ago

patio11 15y ago

It takes an awful lot of work to be the sixth most impressive thing Scoble (or the New York Times, or Techcrunch, or $PICK_A_GATEKEEPER) will see this week. It takes much, much less work to offer a better user experience than a) an Excel spreadsheet sent over email, b) having your office manager act as the endpoint to a REST API, or c) doing anything involving actual paper. These are frequently the competition in underserved markets. There's a million fun, valuable, important problems to solve out there which you go grow old and die without ever reading about on a Valley blog.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

DanielRibeiro 15y ago

Couldn't agree more. What many people fail to realize is that MVP is not about succeeding. It is about failing! If most startups fail, and your idea is most likely to fail, the best way to find something that works is to fail, pivot, and fail again, until you get something people want. The MVP entices this fail/pivot loop to happen as fast as possible. And Scobble is right! If you are still on the failing phase, you shouldn't be seeking attention. Failing silently makes the whole experience less traumatic. And then we can move on to refraiming fail fast to learn fast.

9oliYQjP 15y ago

Isn't Scoble famous for being the guy who essentially took Microsoft, then facing uncertain times because of lack of direction, and suggest that one of their top priorities be to embrace employee blogging at all levels? It's the early 2000s and in the midst of unprecedented competition on all fronts -- everything from the iPod, to the LAMP stack (and its brethren), to Google -- he managed to convince Microsoft to get their employees to take what was essentially their 20% time and apply it not to a concerted defensive product response. But instead, he convinced them that their best strategy was to blog about wtf they were working on with Longhorn instead of, you know, preparing some voice recognition demos that actually didn't screw up because of an echo in the auditorium and threaten to kill (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1123221217782777472 http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1123221217782777472). Bravo, the guy is really convincing. But he's a marketer and his opinions should be sandboxed as such. He's right, the bar is really really really damn high now. But he has hasn't a clue on what it takes to get your chin up above the bar. I see a fat guy at a chin up bar and see somebody who, if they ate healthier and did some exercise, could do ten chin-ups easily. He sees a fat guy who shouldn't even bother to try.