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Is the Lean Startup Dead?

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Re: Is the Lean Startup Dead?

#81

Post by v_lisivka »

brazzy wrote: post #56
mason55 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty interesting how much argument there is against this view on HN. I guess most people coming here now are not familiar with Paul Graham's essay (maybe most HN posters don't even know who Paul Graham is any more) http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html > A startup is a company designed to grow fast. Being newly founded does not in itself make a company a startup. Nor is it necessary for a startup to work on technol…

Interesting how you assume that because Paul Graham wrote that, it is true, and that everyone who thinks differently must not be familiar with what he wrote because surely nobody could disagree with him!

What wrong with that? Are you think that random reporter in random journal you read is way better expert on startups?

Re: Is the Lean Startup Dead?

#83

Post by rdlecler1 »

The low hanging fruit has been picked and we’re waiting for the next technology trigger. My friend said to me recently, not only are all the good ideas taken, but so are all the bad ideas.

Re: Is the Lean Startup Dead?

#84

Post by cs02rm0 »

pixl97 wrote: post #58
simias wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. Why do you think that is? I'm not sure what you're referring to exactly. >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…

>Why do you think that is? I'm not sure what you're referring to exactly. Complexity. Consumers demand more complex applications. Platforms have more complex requirements.

I could well find out I'm wrong in retrospect, but I think part of that is that the low hanging fruit is just gone.

It means once you've made it there's a barrier to entry that keeps you protected, so you may as well go big or go home.

I pitched a startup idea today to an accelerator judging panel. There were three distinct software components to it, each quite complex in the detail and I had three minutes to cover the lot because they're flooded with candidates even after the first sift throwing 80% away. Yet, comparatively it feels quite simple - no AI or ML involved or highly regulated areas.

I might go and find a pong clone to play to cheer myself up.

Re: Is the Lean Startup Dead?

#85

Post by philipodonnell »

awvcs wrote: post #37

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 regulat…

> 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.

I think another way to say this is that the value of time has fallen as the amount of funding available has risen. The prototypical hacker working nights and weekends was a _response_ to the lack of available capital: work harder if you can't hire.

Its like an arms race. Two hackers of equal aptitude start working 120 hours weeks on identical startups targeting similar markets. The one who stops doing that and instead raises a few million to hire a large team and spend lots of marketing dollars is going to win that market (though it may be less profitable).

As more funding chases fewer projects, that point moves earlier and earlier in the process until only a fool would spend 120 hours a week instead of raising money right from the beginning.

Re: Is the Lean Startup Dead?

#86

Post by village-idiot »

startupdiscuss wrote: post #79

I should also point out why the "Lean Startup" is more relevant than ever: Theranos. (The other story trending in hacker news). After reading Bad Blood, I am not convinced that Holmes (at least initially) intended to perpetrate a fraud. She may have believed it was possible to produce the machine she dreamed off, and it was a question of putting in the R&D. (It still might be possible). If this is the case, the "lean…

An interesting theory.

I don’t know what to think about Holmes. At this point she thinks she just did what every other (male) startup founder did, and that she’s getting singled out for punishment when plenty of other startups over promised and under delivered. She doesn’t seem to grasp that flopping on some shitty social media site is far lower stakes than lying about medical issues, which makes me question her ethics and grasp on reality.

Re: Is the Lean Startup Dead?

#87

Post by throwaway080383 »

sandworm101 wrote: post #66
simias wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. Why do you think that is? I'm not sure what you're referring to exactly. >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…

Disruption doesn't come from direct competition. Writing another web browser isn't going to disrupt the market for web browsers. You need a new concept in how we access web-type material. That would disrupt, and wouldn't need much code. Look at Napster et al. They weren't massive but still disrupted the music industry. The gaming industry still has room for lone coders to make a difference. Many of the top indi games…

Heck, both DotA and Counter-Strike began life as user-made mods on existing games, and their relevancy has far outlived those of the base games.

Re: Is the Lean Startup Dead?

#88

Post by dmix »

edoceo wrote: post #70
jillesvangurp wrote: post #36

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=…

""the baby with the bathwater by focusing on only doing things that had low option value and low risk. "" That's not what the Lean Startup says. Lean is about reducing risk but that doesn't box one into only doing low risk/value activity

What Lean says and how people commonly used it are distinct, which is what the OP is talking about. Some people took some parts of Lean too far and didn't focus enough on delivering a high level of value. That takes risk and vision, but you build better products.

As opposed to obsessing over managing risk and keeping things lean, without properly investing in the hypothesis to really test them out. Which means in practice a bunch of small half-hearted plays that get abandoned too early - or were inherently a minor incremental value proposition that wasn't valuable enough to build a sustainable business around.

Re: Is the Lean Startup Dead?

#90

Post by mediaman »

startupdiscuss wrote: post #79

I should also point out why the "Lean Startup" is more relevant than ever: Theranos. (The other story trending in hacker news). After reading Bad Blood, I am not convinced that Holmes (at least initially) intended to perpetrate a fraud. She may have believed it was possible to produce the machine she dreamed off, and it was a question of putting in the R&D. (It still might be possible). If this is the case, the "lean…

Theranos's problem seems to be that they (especially Holmes) would not bend on technical issues that would have allowed them to build a functioning product.

It sounds like if they had allowed the machine to be a little bigger, and if they had compromised on being able to take a little more blood (instead of the one drop they had been marketing), they could have had a real machine that would produce reliable results.

Then they could have iterated and continued the push to miniaturize what they already had commercialized.

Instead, Holmes insisted on a sample size that technically they couldn't achieve reliable results with, and when faced with the decision of compromising on spec to get something to work, or release something that didn't work and then lie about it, she chose the latter.

If anything, a "lean" approach (to the extent possible with medical testing hardware) would have benefited them.

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