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Is the Lean Startup Dead?

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Re: Is the Lean Startup Dead?

#31

Post by edanm »

TekMol wrote: post #12
edanm wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solo entrepreneurs are not starting a startup, not as I (and most people) understand the term. After all, those thousands of "solo entrepreneurs" are starting things like coffee-shops, restaurants, garages, etc. They're examples of entrepreneurship, sure, but not startups. Startups are specifically organizations that are trying to grow very big, or that are looking to try a new business model. The reason the spotligh…

By that definition many unicorns that are seen as prototypes of successful startups would never have been startups. I think you have been tricked by YC and other VCs to accept this definition of 'built from the start for hyper-growth'. That's how they get their share of young promising companies. To me and most people I know, a startup is a project or company in the growth phase.

> By that definition many unicorns that are seen as prototypes of successful startups would never have been startups.

I don't think that's true? Which unicorns are not companies that were pursuing high-growth, or that were trying to build a unique productbusiness model?

> I think you have been tricked by YC and other VCs to accept this definition of 'built from the start for hyper-growth'.

I haven't been tricked into anything. We are commenting on an article written by Steve Blank, one of the "founders" of the lean startup movement. His definition of a startup is "a startup is an organization formed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model." [1]

Of course this is all just semantics, so feel free to use the word in a different way. Where I disagree with you is this:

> To me and most people I know, a startup is a project or company in the growth phase.

I simply don't think that's true. I think most people would not consider e.g. a new law office to be a startup, definitely not in the context of talking about things like the "lean startup" movement.

That's why I love Steve Blank's definition - I think it does what every good definition does - it gives more understanding. It helps give a simple answer to "when does a company stop being a 'startup' and become a regular company". The answer is - when it has found a scalable business model, and is now executing on that.

For the record, I'm a big fan of bootstrapping, I ran a successful bootstrapped development agency in the past (which was acquired), and am now back to running a (bootstrapped) consultancy. I just don't think that people would include my company when thinking of startups - and that's fine! Entrepreneurship takes many forms.

[1] https://steveblank.com/2010/01/25/whats-a-startup-first-prin...

Re: Is the Lean Startup Dead?

#32

Post by swalsh »

One of the interesting differences between Jeff Katzenberg's new startup, and the type of startup's that existed when the Lean Startup was invented is the number of variables which are unknown. This new media startup isn't starting at an unknown. In fact, virtually everything about this business model has been tested before somewhere.

Lean is about experimentally approaching hypothesis about business models. Then scaling up when you find something that works. Short videos targeting mobile isn't new. If I allowed him too, my son would watch dumb youtube videos all day on my phone. This is a gamble that consumers might want better quality content. Not a huge gamble :\

Re: Is the Lean Startup Dead?

#33

Post by edanm »

1ba9115454 wrote: post #10
edanm wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solo entrepreneurs are not starting a startup, not as I (and most people) understand the term. After all, those thousands of "solo entrepreneurs" are starting things like coffee-shops, restaurants, garages, etc. They're examples of entrepreneurship, sure, but not startups. Startups are specifically organizations that are trying to grow very big, or that are looking to try a new business model. The reason the spotligh…

This is a difficult argument to counter, the term Startup doesn't have a definitive definition that I'm aware of. So we could be arguing semantics. But fair enough, exclude the coffee shops, restaurants if you like. But you're still left with a lot of people building something they hope gets bigger. That fits your definition.

> But you're still left with a lot of people building something they hope gets bigger. That fits your definition.

Like you said, this is just arguing semantics. That's why I like Steve Blank's definition, which is not about growth (see my other comment on this thread for more).

I would say that "hoping it gets bigger" is not enough - every business owner hopes their business gets bigger. Most of them don't realistically hope it will become the next Amazon, nor do they strive to make that happen, and so many ideas/lessons from the startup world don't really apply to them (while others do still apply, of course).

Re: Is the Lean Startup Dead?

#34

Post by rawrmaan »

sharemywin wrote: post #16
akuji1993 wrote: post #4

$1 billion for a video streaming service?? Are these people actually insane? I don't see any way they will make back that much money with a service in a completely oversaturated part of the internet where YouTube, Netflix and other streaming services are pretty much meeting every desire any customer would have. I mean, power to the people that have invested, but this looks like an investment graveyard.

youtube leaves a lot to be desired from a quality stand point.

I don't agree. I find the problem with YouTube is that there's too much quality content and I need to keep myself from wasting too much time on it.

Re: Is the Lean Startup Dead?

#35

Post by codingdave »

edanm wrote: post #9
1ba9115454 wrote: post #3

For every Startup raising $X million in funding there are probably a thousand solo entrepreneurs bootstrapping their way into profitability. The spotlight only shines on "Startup X raises millions in new round". Side projects are the new Lean startup.

Solo entrepreneurs are not starting a startup, not as I (and most people) understand the term. After all, those thousands of "solo entrepreneurs" are starting things like coffee-shops, restaurants, garages, etc. They're examples of entrepreneurship, sure, but not startups. Startups are specifically organizations that are trying to grow very big, or that are looking to try a new business model. The reason the spotligh…

I think it is clear that "startup" is a word defined differently by different people. Sure, there is the YC/SV/VC definition that it is about grow big and fast or fail. And maybe that is the crowd you run with, which is why you think most people define it that way. But to many other people, including most of my community, it is about starting something new, whether that is a slow bootstrap or a fast funding, and whether or not it is interesting.

Re: Is the Lean Startup Dead?

#36

Post by jillesvangurp »

Yes and no. IMHO Lean has generated a lot of startups that had too much of a narrow focus and optimized away all the potentially interesting parts of their products because they were focusing on a MVP that turned out to be lacking in the V part because they were focusing on the M part.

There's this great presentation by Don Reinertsen "Second Generation Lean Product Development Flow": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6v6W7jkwok&index=55&list=LL...

Which is a perfectly valid way to fix some of the worst offenses of the original Lean movement, which were to throw out the baby with the bathwater by focusing on only doing things that had low option value and low risk. Sort of the opposite of what you need to do in a startup, which is to do something genuinely new and creating value while taking calculated risks.

Don does a great job of providing some nice economic rationalizations of how deal with things that are risky but valuable, planning and estimating these things, etc. He also makes a great argument for shipping value fast, which is to maximize the economic life span of your product and prioritize getting revenue earlier vs. getting revenue later with a potentially better product. Many tech startups get sucked into building the perfect thing and missing their window of opportunity for both raising funding and monetizing their product.

Unless of course your startup is not about the tech, in which case definitely avoid taking risks on the tech front and focus on shipping a product fast. If you are building a market place, the last thing you want to do is reinventing how those work. You instead want to focus on whatever the hell it is you are selling. Lean was always popular with those type of startups. I tend to think of them as no-tech startups. You get a bunch of MBAs, marketing and other non techies and then bring in the full stack hipsters to copy paste a bunch of crappy js files together to fake it until you can afford to hire a proper team.

Re: Is the Lean Startup Dead?

#37

Post by awvcs »

I wish it wasn't so but I do think to the degree you can declare something dead the lean startup is. The problem is that lean startups requires a number of things that aren't accessible anymore.

A) Maybe the most important is time. You need time in a good environment to actually develop something. Which has become a lot more costly.

B) Large companies are controlling more areas than ever. People often wary of regulation as a barrier, but as time goes by the market participants creates their own barriers. Many areas are just harder to have an impact in than it used to be.

C) And then there is just competition, especially for things like talent.

I guess it isn't the lean startup that is dead so much as the environment for it. You can say the same thing about co-operatives, non-profits, community establishments and a lot of other things that are good ideas (probably more so than ever) but not able to flourish because of other interests.

Re: Is the Lean Startup Dead?

#38

Post by 1ba9115454 »

edanm wrote: post #33
1ba9115454 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a difficult argument to counter, the term Startup doesn't have a definitive definition that I'm aware of. So we could be arguing semantics. But fair enough, exclude the coffee shops, restaurants if you like. But you're still left with a lot of people building something they hope gets bigger. That fits your definition.

> But you're still left with a lot of people building something they hope gets bigger. That fits your definition. Like you said, this is just arguing semantics. That's why I like Steve Blank's definition, which is not about growth (see my other comment on this thread for more). I would say that "hoping it gets bigger" is not enough - every business owner hopes their business gets bigger. Most of them don't realistica…

> and so many ideas/lessons from the startup world don't really apply to them

I'm interested, which wouldn't apply? I mean just a couple of examples.

Re: Is the Lean Startup Dead?

#39

Post by rmah »

bobmarley1 wrote: post #21
sharemywin wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

youtube leaves a lot to be desired from a quality stand point.

Yet it still has a massive first mover advantage.

Youtube wasn't even close to first -- it started in 2005. They were more like third or fourth. Youtube (and later google) got the formula and right -- they learned from the mistake the first movers made.

Sort of like Facebook, Dropbox, Salesforce, Instagram, Google, etc. None of them were first. Being first is dangerous.

Re: Is the Lean Startup Dead?

#40

Post by siruncledrew »

I think it's cyclical: there are periods of lots of funding available and less of funding available. There's still market economics at play. So the Lean Startup is not permanently dead simply because we see articles of startups getting $XX million funding or have $X billion valuations.

A company that is restricted on cash and "lean" is more inclined to be risk-averse and calculated in their business model decisions because they have to 'do more with less'. Whereas a company pumped full of cash has a greater 'trial and error' risk-tolerance because their goal is to overpower a target market to become the dominant player as quickly as possible. Investors still want to see a pleasing return either way.

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