Is the Lean Startup Dead? • Hacker News Board

Re: Is the Lean Startup Dead?

#121

Post by WhompingWindows » Wed, Sep 05, 2018, 4:44 PM UTC

amirathi wrote: post #104

> 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…

Maybe Big Bang is more effective for iterative companies, those whose business model and PMF is well established. like a second wave of ride-share businesses who copy the Uber/Lyft paradigm but with enough of a personalized twist to secure substantial capital upfront.

Re: Is the Lean Startup Dead?

#122

Post by kesor » Wed, Sep 05, 2018, 4:45 PM UTC

pnenp wrote: post #112

Calling a popular term "dead" is certainly a good way to attract clicks. And sure, when money is cheap and you have $2B to spend, you can afford to throw much bigger Spaghetti at the wall. But Lean defines a startup as a project under extreme uncertainty. Commercial video streaming sites exist, the only thing that seems to be new about the example in the article is the video length. I would not consider this an envir…

You do realize that Steve practically invented the term, right?

Re: Is the Lean Startup Dead?

#123

Post by nicodjimenez » Wed, Sep 05, 2018, 4:45 PM UTC

dgudkov wrote: post #107

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 f…

You can definitely skip product market fit. It takes some startups years to find true product market fit.

The price of admission of product market fit is a great product and a great team. Hard to do these things on a budget, especially as the space of "cheap" startups that can be built with a few 100k becomes more crowded.

Re: Is the Lean Startup Dead?

#124

Post by awvcs » Wed, Sep 05, 2018, 4:46 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…

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

There are a lot of stories of people falling into technology entrepreneurship by showing up. I guess you could say that it was less competitive (which it was), but I also think that society was more lenient. We hadn't figured out yet how to charge a lot for everything. If some landlord was 'greedy' you could move to some adjacent area. Today with information spreading so fast everyone knows not only what something is worth but what it could potentially be worth and price accordingly.

Like this story from Max Levchin starting with "I didn't really make any arrangements, so I just crashed on Scott's floor" [0].

[0] https://www.businessinsider.com/max-levchin-paypal-affirm-su...

Re: Is the Lean Startup Dead?

#125

Post by nicodjimenez » Wed, Sep 05, 2018, 4:48 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #93

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…

> That one definitely sounds true to me, the complexity of modern software definitely makes it harder to be competitive with big shops. As software professionals, this is a problem of our own making. Nobody is asking for software to be complex. Users don’t want complexity. Development companies don’t want costly complexity. Software developers don’t even want complexity. Who has sat down at the start of a project and…

Programs are big because peoples needs are big.

Re: Is the Lean Startup Dead?

#126

Post by ww520 » Wed, Sep 05, 2018, 4:49 PM UTC

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=…

That's a very educational video. The use of the queuing theory for capacity utilization and the asymmetric payout for increased variability are really insightful.

Re: Is the Lean Startup Dead?

#127

Post by pdonis » Wed, Sep 05, 2018, 4:54 PM UTC

dgudkov wrote: post #107

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 f…

> if you have no product/market fit you're toast

Unless you create the market to fit the product. Which could be what Katzenberg, for example, is trying to do: create a new fad and cash in on it.

Re: Is the Lean Startup Dead?

#128

Post by jedberg » Wed, Sep 05, 2018, 4:55 PM UTC

dgudkov wrote: post #107

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 f…

Microsoft spent billions propping up Xbox for years before they found market fit. You don't need market fit if you have lots of cash.

Re: Is the Lean Startup Dead?

#129

Post by pnenp » Wed, Sep 05, 2018, 4:55 PM UTC

kesor wrote: post #122

pnenp wrote: post #112

Calling a popular term "dead" is certainly a good way to attract clicks. And sure, when money is cheap and you have $2B to spend, you can afford to throw much bigger Spaghetti at the wall. But Lean defines a startup as a project under extreme uncertainty. Commercial video streaming sites exist, the only thing that seems to be new about the example in the article is the video length. I would not consider this an envir…

You do realize that Steve practically invented the term, right?

That's evident from the article. And it does not change the fact that the headline is clickbait, a promise which the article fails to deliver on.

Re: Is the Lean Startup Dead?

#130

Post by hinkley » Wed, Sep 05, 2018, 4:58 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…

It never struck me that lean startups were supposed to be about disrupting anything.

Disruption to me is a power grab and you have to do it with some exuberance or why bother?