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Why I Don't Like the Lean Startup

3 points by adamzerner 13y ago

adamzerner 13y ago
Feedback please!
crawfordcomeaux 13y ago
I think the point of "assuming your idea is wrong" is a technique for managing risk. The author fails to take into account a huge source of human error when it comes to what he's proposing: ego. "Startups are about identifying what people want, and giving it to them. People tend to be pretty bad at doing this because they’re not honest with themselves about whether or not people actually want it." People are even worse at being honest with themselves about what they're good at and what they know. The result of assuming you're wrong & testing all assumptions is discovery of the "unknown unknowns." Yes, it takes time, but there are loads of techniques/processes that have been developed in the past few years that minimize that time. If your goal is failure, hand the reins over to ego. If your goal is success, question everything.
- adamzerner 13y ago
  "People are even worse at being honest with themselves about what they're good at and what they know. The result of assuming you're wrong & testing all assumptions is discovery of the 'unknown unknowns.'" True. There's absolutely an advantage to testing. The question (as always) is whether the opportunity cost outweighs this advantage. I think that "question everything" is a huge overgeneralization. You don't have time for that. To be successful, you have to have the ability to put yourself inside the minds of your consumers, and know what they want (at least in the big picture sense. obviously feedback is useful for smaller things).
  - crawfordcomeaux 13y ago
    I think it's sort of a lesser of two evils that's chosen for the sake of increasing the overall success rate of startups. Imagine 3 people creating 3 different startups: one's humble, another's an ego-maniac, and the third's balanced between humility and ego. The humble one's probably going to go the route of "over-testing," to some degree (though you could argue that confirming an assumption is right is just as valuable as discovering it's wrong). The ego-driven person thinks they know what customers want, but is likely wrong about some things. For the sake of simplicity, let's say the humble one will succeed as a result & the ego-driven one will fail. Obviously, that's not realistic, but if you consider each person as representing the average success of all startups that operate within their range of the "humility spectrum," it sort of makes sense. Now imagine that the person in the middle doesn't know whether they should trust themselves or to question everything and will operate based on what you tell them. If you give them permission to trust themselves, they'll go the way of the ego-maniac. If you tell them to question everything, they'll go the route of the humble one. If you tell them "test what you need to and trust yourself on the rest," they stay right where they are because they don't have any metrics for gauging themselves. People will easily detect wasted time/effort spent on testing & adapt to avoid it. It's much harder to detect false understanding before wasting time on development.
    - adamzerner 13y ago
      Moving forward and developing an idea that no one wants is definitely a problem. Testing is a decent way to rectify this problem. However, I think that the underlying problem is that people are coming up with bad ideas in the first place. No amount of testing and iterating is going to save someone who is incapable of putting themselves inside the minds of the consumers and knowing in a big pictures sense what it is that they want. And even if testing does lead you to better understanding of your consumers, that doesn't change the fact that it isn't always proper. It's a case by case basis. Sometimes you are confident that you know what they want, and testing would take time away from other things. You seem to be arguing that in the aggregate, it would be useful if people of certain "humilities" tested more. That's probably true, but my two points are: 1) they'd be better off solving the underlying problem of their abilities to know what people want. (this is a good starting point for learning - http://www.paulgraham.com/startupideas.html http://www.paulgraham.com/startupideas.html) 2) you shouldn't make decisions based on the aggregate population. you have more information, and you can decide whether or not testing is appropriate based on your personal situation.
      - crawfordcomeaux 13y ago
        The aggregation aspect of the thought experiment was just to frame things. I'm not a proponent of making decisions based on the aggregate. A TL;DR version of what I wrote might be "Learn to do it right before you do it well." Developing enough empathy for consumers is definitely necessary, but also really difficult to do. Design thinking is the best approach to solving that problem I've encountered so far, but testing is still a huge component. This reminds me of an awesome series of posts on how to run a 5-day design sprint that came out of Google Venture's design team: http://www.designstaff.org/articles/product-design-sprint-2012-10-02.html http://www.designstaff.org/articles/product-design-sprint-20...
        adamzerner 13y ago
        "Developing enough empathy for consumers is definitely necessary, but also really difficult to do. Design thinking is the best approach to solving that problem I've encountered so far, but testing is still a huge component." I guess we agree then.

3 points by adamzerner 13y ago

Feedback please!

I think the point of "assuming your idea is wrong" is a technique for managing risk. The author fails to take into account a huge source of human error when it comes to what he's proposing: ego. "Startups are about identifying what people want, and giving it to them. People tend to be pretty bad at doing this because they’re not honest with themselves about whether or not people actually want it." People are even worse at being honest with themselves about what they're good at and what they know. The result of assuming you're wrong & testing all assumptions is discovery of the "unknown unknowns." Yes, it takes time, but there are loads of techniques/processes that have been developed in the past few years that minimize that time. If your goal is failure, hand the reins over to ego. If your goal is success, question everything.

adamzerner 13y ago
"People are even worse at being honest with themselves about what they're good at and what they know. The result of assuming you're wrong & testing all assumptions is discovery of the 'unknown unknowns.'" True. There's absolutely an advantage to testing. The question (as always) is whether the opportunity cost outweighs this advantage. I think that "question everything" is a huge overgeneralization. You don't have time for that. To be successful, you have to have the ability to put yourself inside the minds of your consumers, and know what they want (at least in the big picture sense. obviously feedback is useful for smaller things).
- crawfordcomeaux 13y ago
  I think it's sort of a lesser of two evils that's chosen for the sake of increasing the overall success rate of startups. Imagine 3 people creating 3 different startups: one's humble, another's an ego-maniac, and the third's balanced between humility and ego. The humble one's probably going to go the route of "over-testing," to some degree (though you could argue that confirming an assumption is right is just as valuable as discovering it's wrong). The ego-driven person thinks they know what customers want, but is likely wrong about some things. For the sake of simplicity, let's say the humble one will succeed as a result & the ego-driven one will fail. Obviously, that's not realistic, but if you consider each person as representing the average success of all startups that operate within their range of the "humility spectrum," it sort of makes sense. Now imagine that the person in the middle doesn't know whether they should trust themselves or to question everything and will operate based on what you tell them. If you give them permission to trust themselves, they'll go the way of the ego-maniac. If you tell them to question everything, they'll go the route of the humble one. If you tell them "test what you need to and trust yourself on the rest," they stay right where they are because they don't have any metrics for gauging themselves. People will easily detect wasted time/effort spent on testing & adapt to avoid it. It's much harder to detect false understanding before wasting time on development.
  - adamzerner 13y ago
    Moving forward and developing an idea that no one wants is definitely a problem. Testing is a decent way to rectify this problem. However, I think that the underlying problem is that people are coming up with bad ideas in the first place. No amount of testing and iterating is going to save someone who is incapable of putting themselves inside the minds of the consumers and knowing in a big pictures sense what it is that they want. And even if testing does lead you to better understanding of your consumers, that doesn't change the fact that it isn't always proper. It's a case by case basis. Sometimes you are confident that you know what they want, and testing would take time away from other things. You seem to be arguing that in the aggregate, it would be useful if people of certain "humilities" tested more. That's probably true, but my two points are: 1) they'd be better off solving the underlying problem of their abilities to know what people want. (this is a good starting point for learning - http://www.paulgraham.com/startupideas.html http://www.paulgraham.com/startupideas.html) 2) you shouldn't make decisions based on the aggregate population. you have more information, and you can decide whether or not testing is appropriate based on your personal situation.
    - crawfordcomeaux 13y ago
      The aggregation aspect of the thought experiment was just to frame things. I'm not a proponent of making decisions based on the aggregate. A TL;DR version of what I wrote might be "Learn to do it right before you do it well." Developing enough empathy for consumers is definitely necessary, but also really difficult to do. Design thinking is the best approach to solving that problem I've encountered so far, but testing is still a huge component. This reminds me of an awesome series of posts on how to run a 5-day design sprint that came out of Google Venture's design team: http://www.designstaff.org/articles/product-design-sprint-2012-10-02.html http://www.designstaff.org/articles/product-design-sprint-20...
      - adamzerner 13y ago
        "Developing enough empathy for consumers is definitely necessary, but also really difficult to do. Design thinking is the best approach to solving that problem I've encountered so far, but testing is still a huge component." I guess we agree then.