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Lean Startup "Marketing Bullshit"

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Re: Lean Startup "Marketing Bullshit"

#11

Post by mkramlich »

klochner wrote: post #7

The author is lacking an understanding of business jargon. Very little jargon was vacuous when coined. It is the endless repetition by the uninformed that renders it meaningless. Ries is trying to change the way people think about startups, and as a part of that effort he is consciously promoting neologisms that capture the principles of the lean startup. I like those principles, I understand that he wants to create…

Gladwell didn't invent that term 'tipping point'. I remember seeing it and using it long before his book came out, which according to Wikipedia was around 2000.

Re: Lean Startup "Marketing Bullshit"

#12

Post by klochner »

mkramlich wrote: post #11
klochner wrote: post #7

The author is lacking an understanding of business jargon. Very little jargon was vacuous when coined. It is the endless repetition by the uninformed that renders it meaningless. Ries is trying to change the way people think about startups, and as a part of that effort he is consciously promoting neologisms that capture the principles of the lean startup. I like those principles, I understand that he wants to create…

Gladwell didn't invent that term 'tipping point'. I remember seeing it and using it long before his book came out, which according to Wikipedia was around 2000.

Please send me a link if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure he coined the non-scientific, or at least popular usage. I don't remember having heard the phrase tipping point before the book came out, even though I was fairly familiar with the idea.

Re: Lean Startup "Marketing Bullshit"

#13

Post by edanm »

rokhayakebe wrote: post #5
gfodor wrote: post #2

I'm admittedly short on my knowledge of this newfangled "lean startup" notion. But, it sounds to me like the fundamental principle is "lazy product evaluation." Ie, instead of building anything up-front, go out, find out what people want, and build that , MVP, reacting to markets that you know, provably, to already exist. At the risk of getting told I don't "get it", this sounds like a great way to build a very succe…

Would you rather build a very successful & boring startup, or work on something super cool, with no clear way of turning a profit?

That's a good question, and I'm sure people go either way on this. I for one am definitely looking for success, but I try to find it by doing things I like and care about.

I'm comforted by Paul Graham's thoughts on this, namely that if you build something people like, you'll usually manage to find a profit somewhere.

Re: Lean Startup "Marketing Bullshit"

#14

Post by [deleted] »

rokhayakebe wrote: post #5
gfodor wrote: post #2

I'm admittedly short on my knowledge of this newfangled "lean startup" notion. But, it sounds to me like the fundamental principle is "lazy product evaluation." Ie, instead of building anything up-front, go out, find out what people want, and build that , MVP, reacting to markets that you know, provably, to already exist. At the risk of getting told I don't "get it", this sounds like a great way to build a very succe…

Would you rather build a very successful & boring startup, or work on something super cool, with no clear way of turning a profit?

[deleted]

Re: Lean Startup "Marketing Bullshit"

#15

Post by edanm »

gfodor wrote: post #4
kylemathews wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vision is a critical part of a leanstartup and by no means is the fundamental principle "lazy product evaluation". To quote an Eric Ries post: "Lean Startups are driven by a compelling vision, and they are rigorous about testing each element of this vision against reality." The two most important leanstartup principles or teachings for me are a) I'm stupid and make really poor assumptions all the time. To combat that…

Your last paragraph has a lot of words but says very little. Can it not all be summed up as "talk to your customers?" Isn't this the foundation of any business? Does anyone actually advocate not doing so? Obviously you need to be aware of the problems your customers face as a business. But the notion that anything is the "most important" metric of progress reeks of classic silver-bulletism that plagues software engin…

"Can it not all be summed up as 'talk to your customers?' Isn't this the foundation of any business? Does anyone actually advocate not doing so?"

I don't think anyone advocates not talking to your customers, but Steve Blank makes a bigger point than that.

The point isn't just to talk to your customers. It's that the CEO, the founders, the people with the control have to talk to the customers.

A lot of companies have the CEO, the programming team, and the rest of the decision makers relatively isolated from the customers, whereas the sales team is the one out there talking to customers every day.

This isolation still makes it look like the company is talking to customers (they have sales out there, every day, listening to customer feedback). But because the real decision makers aren't themselves experiencing the way the customers use their product, they'll never understand it the way they need to to keep making their product better.

Re: Lean Startup "Marketing Bullshit"

#16

Post by georgieporgie »

klochner wrote: post #12
mkramlich wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gladwell didn't invent that term 'tipping point'. I remember seeing it and using it long before his book came out, which according to Wikipedia was around 2000.

Please send me a link if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure he coined the non-scientific, or at least popular usage. I don't remember having heard the phrase tipping point before the book came out, even though I was fairly familiar with the idea.

Dictionary.com lists Gladwell in the etymology. However, Wikipedia's entry for "tipping point (sociology)" (which, to my knowledge, is effectively the same as Gladwell's use) says, "The phrase was coined in its sociological use by Morton Grodzins, by analogy with ..."

The page on Grodzins says, "He is known for coining the term "tipping point" in studies of white flight, such as The Metropolitan Area as a Racial Problem (1958)".

No doubt Gladwell popularized the phrase, but I don't think he coined it by any means.

Re: Lean Startup "Marketing Bullshit"

#17

Post by jteo »

rokhayakebe wrote: post #5
gfodor wrote: post #2

I'm admittedly short on my knowledge of this newfangled "lean startup" notion. But, it sounds to me like the fundamental principle is "lazy product evaluation." Ie, instead of building anything up-front, go out, find out what people want, and build that , MVP, reacting to markets that you know, provably, to already exist. At the risk of getting told I don't "get it", this sounds like a great way to build a very succe…

Would you rather build a very successful & boring startup, or work on something super cool, with no clear way of turning a profit?

Success is success. The details are secondary.

Re: Lean Startup "Marketing Bullshit"

#18

Post by davidw »

georgieporgie wrote: post #16
klochner wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please send me a link if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure he coined the non-scientific, or at least popular usage. I don't remember having heard the phrase tipping point before the book came out, even though I was fairly familiar with the idea.

Dictionary.com lists Gladwell in the etymology. However, Wikipedia's entry for "tipping point (sociology)" (which, to my knowledge, is effectively the same as Gladwell's use) says, "The phrase was coined in its sociological use by Morton Grodzins, by analogy with ..." The page on Grodzins says, "He is known for coining the term "tipping point" in studies of white flight, such as The Metropolitan Area as a Racial Prob…

Perhaps one could say that his book was a tipping point in the wider diffusion and knowledge of the term? :-)

Re: Lean Startup "Marketing Bullshit"

#19

Post by giffc »

plinkplonk wrote: post #8

I personally find Steve Blank has some interesting things to say and Eric Ries not so much, comparitively. The latter seems to be trying to turn a simple idea (combine agile engineering practices with Steve Blank's "customer discovery/validation" idea") into a consultingware "movement" with kool-aid conferences and such, just as with all business fads. The jury is still out on the eventual success of such efforts. Th…

I believe that Eric's heart is in the right place and he truly wants to help more entrepreneurs. I don't disagree that born-again evangelism and "scammy consultants" is an unfortunate side effect of what is going on.

While people will like or dislike my op-ed as they will, I'd just like to say that in writing the blog post, I had no such motives (consulting, that is) -- I'm just another startup guy trying to build a company.

I do agree with the other commenter that there is a new set of "buzzwords" floating around, like MVP, product-market fit, pivot, etc. These phrases emerge as shorthand.

But still I do believe that these authors are more rigorous, more into measurement and results, and more down-to-earth practical than the kinds of biz-consulting blowhard that turned everyone off business speak in the first place.

Re: Lean Startup "Marketing Bullshit"

#20

Post by giffc »

jteo wrote: post #17
rokhayakebe wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you rather build a very successful & boring startup, or work on something super cool, with no clear way of turning a profit?

Success is success. The details are secondary.

this attitude doesn't prevent successes, but it does lead to unnecessarily high failure rates
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