upvote for the drawings
The Startup Dragon
11–18 of 18 posts
Re: The Startup Dragon
#12I kind of stopped using LLL as a tool because initially it was really horrendous and frankly, convinced me that release early is not as smart. I checked it out recently, it is much better... still, whole idea about canvas is that I can draw it on paper, I kind of like that. I might use LLL, but not as primary tool for sure.
Re: The Startup Dragon
#13Tansey is a great commenter/submitter and I respect his opinion, and I also mean no disrespect to the people working on LLL, but honestly the reason I wouldn't use a tool like this is because I don't think it is useful.
Look at the screenshots. https://www.leanlaunchlab.com/#screenshot-canvas
"Key activities: Write code. Meet entrepreneurs. "
"Cost structure: Employees. Rent"
These are obvious. These arn't things that need to be written down in a planning app. A 10 minute smoke break and it should be in your head for good. Then a month later they are in an accounting app or spreadsheet with hard figures on them.
Then there is an internal blog with commenters talking about learnings and whether or not angel funded startups have board meetings. Common, do people really needs this?
It's starting to feel like everyone talking about "lean startups" is just trying to "play business" instead of making an awesome product that solves a real problem and hustling hard[1] charging people as much as they can for it. The whole thing reeks of MBA BS.
[1] (read: meeting clients, split testing, funnel marketing, optimizing adwords, etc. not writing internal blog posts about how you feel things are going)
Re: The Startup Dragon
#14Read Four Steps To The Epiphany. Steve describes exactly what you're writing about, pretty much even the dragon:
"The hero’s journey is an apt way to think of startups. ... Obstacles, hardships and disaster lie ahead... It tests their stamina, agility, and the limits of courage.
Most entrepreneurs feel their journey is unique. Yet what Campbell perceived about the mythological hero’s journey is true of startups as well: however dissimilar the stories may be in detail, their outline is always the same. Most entrepreneurs travel down the startup path without a roadmap and believe that no model or template could apply to their new venture. They are wrong. For the path of a startup is well worn, and well understood."
Re: The Startup Dragon
#15Hearing people talk about "where to spend your time" and "what makes your startup work" is like listening to children talk about what shapes they see in the clouds. You're reading oracles from turtle shells.
History is non-repeatable, startups are non-repeatable, and the success distribution suggests something less akin to a dragon race and more akin to a state lottery.
Re: The Startup Dragon
#16I'm not in a startup and I know nothing about LLL but I do know this: if you're firefighting and say that you don't have time to draw breath, and that you don't have time to learn the right way to get things back onto track, then that means STOP! Reassess where you're going because you're heading for a crash. Take some time out to get things in perspective and take the time to do it right. Cut back a bit on those tasks that seemed so essential but perhaps you could afford to skip them for a week or two.
Re: The Startup Dragon
#17well I used to be a project manager and a methodology (either PM or software development) evangelist for a medium-sized company before going freelance.
for me going freelance was starting a business - a one person business, and you might call it a startup or not - does not matter really.
what I agree on, after reading this post, is when you're pretty small and you're struggling to get things going, and doing many things on your own (or with just a cofounder or so) (you don't want to lose those customers, do you?) it's pretty hard to use any process methodology / method.
to me what LLL is proposing is an ad-hoc methodology wrapped up in a tool, and I would not use it. because of the dragon. and because I have to make a living.
I prefer to polish my Rails skills to prepare for the next startup-to-be.
Re: The Startup Dragon
#18Lets take the analogy a bit further. Lets say you've now determined that unless you move the rocks faster by finding a better way to move them, there just isn't enough time to move the rocks before the dragon gets you. To continue to do what you're doing, knowing you will fail without getting better is pretty foolish now. To me that's the one of the essentials of lean. Having the adaptability to learn and the recognition of when that time is necessary and crucial.
Sure there are tons of Lean and Agile tools out there that waste more time than they save. Where a whiteboard will do a better job and do it faster and cheaper. I agree many of these tools should have the stamp "Cargo Cult" on their landing page (caveat: I've never used LLL, but I love the lean canvas, it's just that pen and paper is good enough for me). I'll even go so far as to say that I think the market for "tools" exists at least in part for people who are not interested in really learning, but want to follow a step-by-step road map through the product development processes. This is clearly wrong and a colossal mistake. How can anyone honestly learn from the product development process if they are just following the prompts?
So while I think you've probably made the right decision, your analogy makes me wonder if you've done it for the wrong reasons.