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We Have Learned Nothing

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Re: We Have Learned Nothing

#11

Post by jakewins »

loeber wrote: post #10
temp8830 wrote: post #3

The Lean Startup methodology is likely applicable only within a very narrow niche: a newly discovered green field with plenty of low-hanging fruit. Web apps in the late 90s and 2000s. Mobile apps after that. Agent integrations now. These are areas where the barrier to entry is low, problems are plenty, and there's space for a thousand flowers to bloom. In contrast, for a company that can't be started by a single app…

Interestingly, this suggests that the Lean Startup methodology is basically a suboptimal strategy that produces acceptable outcomes only in the most fruitful circumstances. You can start a Lean Startup that makes a little bit of money, but if you'd really bet big and put your back into it, you would've done 1000x better.

Fooled by Randomness talks a good bit about this, and argues it’s true - except you don’t know what to bet on. Hence the outlier successes will be from extreme risk takers, and for each such person there will be 1,000s of other gamblers that bet on the wrong thing.

Taleb does the math as well IIRC, assuming there are x hundred thousand extreme risk takers, and outlier “correct bets” are y% chance, then you will have a surprisingly high number of people with a long series of “correct” bets behind them looking like business geniuses, from pure chance & basic statistics.

Re: We Have Learned Nothing

#12

Post by pinkmuffinere »

techpression wrote: post #9
pinkmuffinere wrote: post #8

If you believe that an achievement involves skill, and that people can hone than skill, then I think you should believe the people who have done it know on average good advice about how to do it. You don't have to accept the premise, you may believe that many people simply got lucky, and no skill is involved. I think most of us do believe that skill is involved in starting a business, so let's just assume it is. I th…

Survivorship bias. For every success you describe there are nine or so failures. Skill being involved doesn’t exclude being lucky, and I believe being lucky (some people call it timing) is of utmost importance.

Ya, I respect this view. It is not the view I have, but I understand how you can have it. Eg, this is how I feel about most famous portfolio managers. Really my comment is addressed to the other view -- if it _isn't_ luck, then I think we should put some weight in what the successful practitioners say, and the ones I've heard do endorse the lean startup & co.

Re: We Have Learned Nothing

#14

Post by Garlef »

serious question:

> no change in survival rates

> less series A

would this not imply that companies got more efficient at using their seed funding?

(But then again: The real dip in series A funding starts in 2018; so we might still see a dip in 10y survivability starting 2028)

Re: We Have Learned Nothing

#15

Post by pwatsonwailes »

A product being good enough isn't enough. At some point you also need to price it, and communicate it's existence persuasively to the market and win market share, and it has to be distributed effectively.

Most businesses fail because they solve for the easier bit (product) and then have no idea about the rest.

Re: We Have Learned Nothing

#16

Post by strken »

baxtr wrote: post #5

> The New Pundits have been around long enough, and are widely known enough, that their relevant books have collectively sold millions of copies and are taught in virtually all university entrepreneurship courses.[4] If they worked, it would show up in the statistics. Instead, there has been zero systematic progress over the past 30 years in making startups more likely to survive. For me, this is where it breaks. The…

I mean, there's also 3: once everyone knows something then they're all fighting with the same sword.

Re: We Have Learned Nothing

#17

Post by apsurd »

temp8830 wrote: post #3

The Lean Startup methodology is likely applicable only within a very narrow niche: a newly discovered green field with plenty of low-hanging fruit. Web apps in the late 90s and 2000s. Mobile apps after that. Agent integrations now. These are areas where the barrier to entry is low, problems are plenty, and there's space for a thousand flowers to bloom. In contrast, for a company that can't be started by a single app…

This is defeatist.

What do I know, I don't run a billion dollar startup. But there's a valuable "necessary but not sufficient" insight to all good advice. The lean startup IS good advice. The best I can do with your argument is "getting out of the building is no longer sufficient".

Sure. But it doesn't make the entire arch of how we got here "wrong". And yes, all companies were started with a few people, a few customers. So that's why there's nothing much here to see for me, other than defeatist sentiment.

Re: We Have Learned Nothing

#18

Post by RGamma »

pwatsonwailes wrote: post #15

A product being good enough isn't enough. At some point you also need to price it, and communicate it's existence persuasively to the market and win market share, and it has to be distributed effectively. Most businesses fail because they solve for the easier bit (product) and then have no idea about the rest.

"Solving for product" is VC pidgin speak. Much contemporary software hardly solves anything anymore; it's getting shittier every iteration without fundamental progress in the field as everything turns into yet another dumbed down web-based abomination that robs us of more of our sanity (exceptions excepted!). There are good explanations for this, but I still don't like it.

Re: We Have Learned Nothing

#19

Post by apsurd »

techpression wrote: post #9
pinkmuffinere wrote: post #8

If you believe that an achievement involves skill, and that people can hone than skill, then I think you should believe the people who have done it know on average good advice about how to do it. You don't have to accept the premise, you may believe that many people simply got lucky, and no skill is involved. I think most of us do believe that skill is involved in starting a business, so let's just assume it is. I th…

Survivorship bias. For every success you describe there are nine or so failures. Skill being involved doesn’t exclude being lucky, and I believe being lucky (some people call it timing) is of utmost importance.

But it doesn't make the survivors wrong about their experience. Two truths: their experience did happen roughly how they said it happened + they got very lucky.

Seems like all the other 9 that died insist on telling the one that survived that they were somehow wrong.

For sure, I do get that one can "do everything right" and still fail, I get that point, I get that there is no formula. But it seems like people want the reverse to be true: that everyone successful is only a lucky buffoon.

Re: We Have Learned Nothing

#20

Post by throwaway27448 »

apsurd wrote: post #17
temp8830 wrote: post #3

The Lean Startup methodology is likely applicable only within a very narrow niche: a newly discovered green field with plenty of low-hanging fruit. Web apps in the late 90s and 2000s. Mobile apps after that. Agent integrations now. These are areas where the barrier to entry is low, problems are plenty, and there's space for a thousand flowers to bloom. In contrast, for a company that can't be started by a single app…

This is defeatist. What do I know, I don't run a billion dollar startup. But there's a valuable "necessary but not sufficient" insight to all good advice. The lean startup IS good advice. The best I can do with your argument is "getting out of the building is no longer sufficient". Sure. But it doesn't make the entire arch of how we got here "wrong". And yes, all companies were started with a few people, a few custom…

Hey there's always communism to aim for when y'all fail to improve society
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