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"People talk about pivoting all the time now, but if something isn’t working after four months, we’ll just shoot it in the head and start again" - Kevin Rose, l

by ericflo 15y ago

"People talk about pivoting all the time now, but if something isn’t working after four months, we’ll just shoot it in the head and start again" - Kevin Rose, last April http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/04/milk-kevin-roses-new-company-aims-to-solve-big-problems-on-the-mobile-web/ http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/04/milk-kevin-roses-new-compan... In fact, I think it shows a lot of discipline to stick to what they said they'd do.

chrischen 15y ago
Well at least he isn't embarrassed at failure like the Pinterest guy.
- b2hack 15y ago
  He was embarassed to shoot it sooner.
mxavier 15y ago
While I'm not disagreeing with this, I wonder if it will impact the users of Milk Inc tools' willingness to participate in future projects. For services which run off of user's submitting content (reviews in the case of Oink), I'd imagine users may become hesitant to contributefor fear of the project (and thus their work) getting shot in the head. I'm not saying terminating a project that didn't meet expectations is wrong, I'm just curious about the lasting implications.
- cgarvey 15y ago
  I was one of the (seemingly) few people using Oink in Orlando, FL, and I thought it was great. I'll certainly be more hesitant to create any more content for a Milk product because it kinda feels like I just fired off information in to a black hole. I figured it would be killed after how little people in my area were using it and I knew what I was getting in to, but I think I'll still let other people be the test dummies next time.
mikeryan 15y ago
In fact, I think it shows a lot of discipline to stick to what they said they'd do. I think a very valid argument can be made that this is the problem with the Milk model. The fact that they're funded without a product mandate means that they have a nice safety net so instead of pivoting a product and trying to fix what they have, they "shoot it in the head" and move on. There's no incentive to try to make what they have work. This isn't discipline, discipline is about making the hard choices and its easy to put a product out to pasture, its in fact the opposite. There's no reason to be disciplined when you're just playing with other people's money. This is pretty much the opposite of what YC does which is give a smart team just enough money to live and make them fend for themselves. You're a hell of a lot more disciplined when you're clawing and scrathcing just to be ramen profitable.

by ericflo 15y ago

chrischen 15y ago

Well at least he isn't embarrassed at failure like the Pinterest guy.

b2hack 15y ago
He was embarassed to shoot it sooner.

mxavier 15y ago

While I'm not disagreeing with this, I wonder if it will impact the users of Milk Inc tools' willingness to participate in future projects. For services which run off of user's submitting content (reviews in the case of Oink), I'd imagine users may become hesitant to contributefor fear of the project (and thus their work) getting shot in the head. I'm not saying terminating a project that didn't meet expectations is wrong, I'm just curious about the lasting implications.

cgarvey 15y ago
I was one of the (seemingly) few people using Oink in Orlando, FL, and I thought it was great. I'll certainly be more hesitant to create any more content for a Milk product because it kinda feels like I just fired off information in to a black hole. I figured it would be killed after how little people in my area were using it and I knew what I was getting in to, but I think I'll still let other people be the test dummies next time.

mikeryan 15y ago

In fact, I think it shows a lot of discipline to stick to what they said they'd do. I think a very valid argument can be made that this is the problem with the Milk model. The fact that they're funded without a product mandate means that they have a nice safety net so instead of pivoting a product and trying to fix what they have, they "shoot it in the head" and move on. There's no incentive to try to make what they have work. This isn't discipline, discipline is about making the hard choices and its easy to put a product out to pasture, its in fact the opposite. There's no reason to be disciplined when you're just playing with other people's money. This is pretty much the opposite of what YC does which is give a smart team just enough money to live and make them fend for themselves. You're a hell of a lot more disciplined when you're clawing and scrathcing just to be ramen profitable.