Is the Lean Startup Dead? • Hacker News Board

Re: Is the Lean Startup Dead?

#101

Post by village-idiot » Wed, Sep 05, 2018, 4:21 PM UTC

startupdiscuss wrote: post #94

village-idiot wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ethi…

I have not seen her current response to the situation. Does she hold out examples? I don't know of any under delivery of this magnitude. (I think even webvan peaked at $4.8 Billion in value. It eventually had peak sales of $178million).

I don’t have the exact quote in front of me, I’m recalling this from Preet Bharara’s podcast.

You’d have to inflation adjust those numbers to be fair, but I suspect that you’re right in calling this one of the biggest under deliveries in a while.

Re: Is the Lean Startup Dead?

#102

Post by skrebbel » Wed, Sep 05, 2018, 4:21 PM UTC

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!

He's not assuming that. He's assuming a large fraction of the HN community agrees with Graham's definition. This certainly used to be the case a few years ago, hence his point.

Re: Is the Lean Startup Dead?

#103

Post by garganzol » Wed, Sep 05, 2018, 4:21 PM UTC

Tangentially related, but the real gold is well hidden and secretly traded. The schlock is through the roof everywhere and in large excess.

A piece of an adequate analysis: https://hackernoon.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-yplan-is-the-mos...

Re: Is the Lean Startup Dead?

#104

Post by amirathi » Wed, Sep 05, 2018, 4:23 PM UTC

> It (Lean) is a response to scarce capital, and when that constraint is loosened, it’s worth considering whether other approaches are superior

Definitely worth looking at both approaches objectively.

1. Lean Approach: Stay lean, build MVPs, find PMF, then go big.

2. Big bang approach: Have conviction in your idea, use capital to launch big from get go.

Given capital is not a constraint, the next most important thing is time i.e. which approach would help us build a thriving business fastest.

Big bangs take up extra time/energy in ancillary tasks like hiring, PR and so on. Pivots take time, even to communicate internally. Lean let's you operate the whole thing as a series of cheap experiments to validate your assumptions. Pivots are natural and cheap.

Big bang would be beneficial over lean only when your first set of assumptions were on the mark and the company required almost no major pivots. That's rare, maybe Katzenberg can pull it off.

Re: Is the Lean Startup Dead?

#105

Post by ryandrake » Wed, Sep 05, 2018, 4:25 PM UTC

wavefunction wrote: post #17

lkrubner wrote: post #11

This needs to be balanced: " All this is driven by corporate funds, sovereign funds and even VC funds with capital pools of tens of billions of dollars dwarfing any of the dollars in the first Dot Com bubble – and all looking for the next Tesla, Uber, Airbnb, or Alibaba. " Yes, but this is the other reality of today, from Calculated Risk: " CR Note: Currently the target range for the federal funds rate is 1.75% to 2%…

I thought the wealthy were job creators, captains of innovation, stewards of the future... We'd be better off taxing these folks who can't find anything to invest in and redistributing the funds to the worst-off. The economic activity would inevitably be captured by these same ineffectual investors but at least the material situation of the poorest among us would be slightly better.

This problem is not new, but arguably getting worse. So much capital out there, in the hands of so few people, and they have no idea how to deploy it productively. Their trillions could be used to start whole industries, build critical infrastructure, and pull millions out of joblessness. Instead, they unimaginarively loan it to the government or a bank for a negative real return.

The rich of the past built the modern world. Today’s rich seem to just sit on their wealth while inflation and missed opportunity erode all the value away.

Re: Is the Lean Startup Dead?

#106

Post by dragonwriter » Wed, Sep 05, 2018, 4:28 PM UTC

mason55 wrote: post #45

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…

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…

The term “startup” was in wide use long before the PG essay, and not consistently restricted to the use PG makes of it either before or after.

Aside from stating what PG means when he uses the term (which is important!), that part of the essay has no real weight.

Re: Is the Lean Startup Dead?

#107

Post by dgudkov » Wed, Sep 05, 2018, 4:28 PM UTC

I'm not sure I understand this. You can't skip finding product/market fit. No matter how much money you have, if you have no product/market fit you're toast. If you're not desperate to find product/market fit (as Lean startups are) because you have tons of money -- you may never find it.

To me, Lean startup is not about money. It's about building the most efficient process of finding product/market fit. Once you've found something that really works, then it's time to look for big money and scale up. In most cases, what you need in the beginning is $50K-500K which can come from savings/FFF/consulting/seed round.

Too much money in the world now. A result of the decade of near-zero interest rates.

Re: Is the Lean Startup Dead?

#108

Post by dansingerman » Wed, Sep 05, 2018, 4:34 PM UTC

simias wrote: post #49

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. 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…

> That one definitely sounds true to me, the complexity of modern software definitely makes it harder to be competitive with big shops.

I disagree. If you want to make a competitive product to the products made by big shops, then that is true. However true innovation is often making something in a category that is new or not well served.

When Jobs/Wozniak made the Apple 1, they weren't competing with big shops mass producing other desktops, they were competing with the likes of MITS producing build-your-own computer kits.

Also the prevalence of on-demand services and APIs now mean you rarely have to make lots of complex software from the ground up. The secret is to find some value your software can deliver which competitors don't exist for, or don't do well.

If you look at the boom in solopreneurship and side projects it's self-evident to me it's never been easier.

Aside: the reason the 'cool hack' stories don't exist now is that they were often about using limited resources to do things that were seemingly difficult/impossible on the available platforms. So they were still examples of new software delivering value. But now as we are far less resource-constrained, and software as a whole is a lot more mature, these opportunities are a lot more scarce.

Re: Is the Lean Startup Dead?

#109

Post by Reedx » Wed, Sep 05, 2018, 4:34 PM UTC

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.

If it works it'll be worth it...

A lot of people thought Google buying YouTube for $1.6b was crazy, even though the space wasn't saturated.

Re: Is the Lean Startup Dead?

#110

Post by dpeck » Wed, Sep 05, 2018, 4:35 PM UTC

Liron wrote: post #54

normo12 wrote: post #41

How much equity do you need to give away to get VC money for an unproven business idea? Is there a ballpark figure? I heard like $100k for 20% or something but I guess that's more like angel investing? What's the minimum amount of work you need to do before getting money with no track record as a founder?

A common approach is to have friends and family invest $50-250k using a SAFE note with a ~$2M cap (e.g. five $10k checks)

calling early investors "friends and family" does so much to keep out and alienate potential founders who don't come from wealth.