5 ms·
I'd like to suggest that all the lessons learned here are precisely what Lean Startup teaches-- with techniques that are meant to prevent you from spending two
by thesash 13y ago
I'd like to suggest that all the lessons learned here are precisely what Lean Startup teaches-- with techniques that are meant to prevent you from spending two years in a death spiral.
Segue to edit of my standard rant on this subject: (originally posted on: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3429906 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3429906)
MVP != half assed, cheap, shitty product. It is exactly what it says: a minimum viable product, key word being viable. An MVP for a mission critical application or a cutting edge piece of research isn't going to be cheap or easy, because it needs to be viable.
Because of the name, many people make the assumption that doing a Lean Startup means not taking the time or money necessary to execute properly, this is not the case. Lean means conserving capital by focusing on iteration until you each product market fit, and only then ramping up sales or marketing, but again, if you're cracking a new market, untested technology, or going up against mature competition, even that phase of conserving capital and focusing in product may require a lot of capital.
Your product, when released to customers, needs to be usable, and needs to scratch an itch for them, otherwise it is inherently not viable. That's why customer development is so essential, it prevents you from making the worst mistake possible-- building a robust product no one wants. Even if you have the best product idea in the world, the only way to know if the features you add are having a positive impact is to measure the behavior of real, live, human users.
That being said, it's still your responsibility to stay relentlessly focused in your core value proposition. You can't build every feature you're customers ask for, only the ones that make sense for your product.
What we're seeing now is the lean startup backlash where people use the terms but don't really take the time to understand what they mean,.
The Lean startup movement is a powerful set of lessons that can empower entrepreneurs and save us from wasting our time and effort building the wrong things and chasing the wrong metrics, but I guess some of the lessons just have to be learned painfully through experience (it was certainly true for me).
- wpietri 13y agoYes, yes, yes. There are so many things they did that are obviously wrong from the Lean Startup perspective. And then he goes and blames the Lean Startup material, rather than their understanding of it. For example, his notion that product management is supposed to be casual and erratic is not what the Lean Startup approach suggests. The essence of the approach is in proving that customers really need something before you invest in it. It's a disciplined, data-driven approach. But he says they built half-assed features that nobody needed, and somehow blames that on the Lean Startup stuff. Also, he preaches about controlling expense. The word "Lean" in "Lean Startup" comes from Lean Manufacturing, the heart of which is relentlessly discovering and eliminating waste. How in the world did he get from that to being free-spending and wasteful? And then this makes me crazy: "By this stage, Lean Startup theory told us we should be scaling up." No. No, no, no, no, no. No! The Lean Startup theory is that you start scaling if and only if you have achieved product-market fit and have a sustainable way to deliver. He described nothing to suggest they were close to product-market fit. Indeed he says they were limping. Or his sudden too-late realization that software quality is important. The Lean Startup stuff is basically Extreme Programming plus Customer Development plus some Lean philosophy. Extreme Programming is one of the most quality-focused methods. At my Lean Startup, we had high unit test coverage, strong acceptance tests, lots of code review, and very high quality. 18 months ago I gave a talk on how quality practices were vital when using the Lean Startup approach: http://vimeo.com/24843552 http://vimeo.com/24843552 And it's not like I was the first, or even the 10th person to talk about this. Rather than blaming the Lean Startup approach, he should blame his poor understanding, and his cargo-cult adoption of various rituals he apparently couldn't fathom.
- nashequilibrium 13y agoThe problem I have is that everyone can rap the lean startup principles but when you ask who has successfully implemented lean startup, nobody says yes. How many people do you guys personally know that have successfully implemented lean startup?
- bjansn 13y agoBy what measure do you want to define if startups have implemented it successfully?
- lelandbatey 13y agoI'm not the parent poster, but I'd basically say: are there any examples at all? Even if we're really loose with what qualifies as "lean startup" are there any examples anyone would be willing to share? I don't mean to imply that there aren't any, but I just haven't heard of any.
- j4ustin 13y agoIf you read The Lean Startup there are examples in there. I mentioned above WPEngine did it, but also look at Food on the Table. These stories show the lean startup done right. The story above is so riddled with holes. It's like the guys heard some buzzwords, read a wikipedia page, and ran with their limited understanding of it.
- codyZ 13y agoTalking about business, entrepreneurship is fun. Doing it is another. Separates the Men from the boys.
- j4ustin 13y agoJason Cohen with WPEngine. Great lean startup. They rock, and are profitable.
- wpietri 13y ago
- jamieb 13y agoTotally. Take the complaint about the mobile app. They built a mobile app that nobody wanted, and then blamed Lean! "Nevertheless as devout Lean Startup followers, we kept building, measuring, and learning. Hidden inside our minimum viable product was a separate mobile application to gather data on logic model performance. This mobile app mystified our customers. Why didn’t we let them input data online at their desks as a starting step?" On what planet can you be doing Lean development and get as far as building an entire app that not one of your customer wants with features that none of them needs? How can anything be "hidden"? Wow. Was this published April 1st?