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If you started a company two years ago, many assumptions are no longer true

steveblank.com

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Re: If you started a company two years ago, many assumptions are no longer true

#81

Post by bluGill »

kokanee wrote: post #60
dist-epoch wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are assuming a linear future while we are in an exponential. One year ago models could barely write a working function.

One year before 1969 we had never been to the moon. In the 70s credible scientists and physicists predicted that large martian colonies would exist before the year 2000. If a metric goes from 0 to 2 it doesn't mean it's on a long-lived exponential trajectory.

Even if there is a growth pattern that doesn't say how long it will continue. Some things can grow for a while and then hit a ceiling. Sometimes they are a fad that dies (when was the last time you bought a pet rock), sometimes everyone has one - you get a few sales of replacemets but no growth (you have a washing machine and won't buy another until the old wears out)

Re: If you started a company two years ago, many assumptions are no longer true

#82

Post by alex_c »

jnovek wrote: post #23
karolist wrote: post #20

The post reads like written by someone who read too much about AI rather than tried to build a startup with the help of AI that they advocate so much. I'm still bounded by system design, UX, pricing and feature decisions, if not by the speed of code output, by the review time for sure. Yes, iterating is faster, but we're nowhere near agentic AI loops spitting out working products. Technically it's possible, but then…

Are you familiar with Steve Blank? What you’re describing really isn’t his MO at all.

I have a lot of respect for Steve Blank, but my heuristic by now is to ignore any breathless posts that state “teams are doing X with AI, if you are not doing the same you’re behind”.

The much more useful posts are “my team and I are doing X with AI”. Of course, the challenge there is that the ones who are truly getting a competitive edge through AI are usually going to be too busy building to blog about it.

Re: If you started a company two years ago, many assumptions are no longer true

#83

Post by bluGill »

bamazizi wrote: post #42

This article resonated with me, especially since I've noticed the fund raising hoopla's in my circle has dramatically dropped. Either investors are tightening the belt so founder-investor fit has crossed into the realm of disillusionment

It is the economy. Interest rates are up and that will hit startups first since investors have other options that are more likely to be better.

Re: If you started a company two years ago, many assumptions are no longer true

#84

Post by all2 »

stickfigure wrote: post #78
all2 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is disingenuous at best. The man is an economist, not a crony operating at the federal level (one does not imply the other, and I know nothing of the man's background).

So in other words... he doesn't actually use the tools he's firmly convinced will automate the building of software. I don't agree with the parent; I think capitalism is doing a lot of great things for us and will continue to, even with AI. But man I'm tired of these hot takes from people with limited practical experience.

> But man I'm tired of these hot takes from people with limited practical experience.

I hear you there. There's a reason I limit what I say online. I know very little about very little.

Re: If you started a company two years ago, many assumptions are no longer true

#85

Post by throwanem »

skeeter2020 wrote: post #67
ryandrake wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's gotten to the point where, when I see yet another Thought Leadership article about software development, I search the page for the word "will". If I see unqualified predictions of the future (AI will change this and Agents will do that and developers will need to do thus), I think I can safely ignore the article. Who has the hubris to make such strong and unwavering statements about a future nobody can see?

How come all the talking heads telling us AI has made whatever we've learned or built obsolete never point the lens back at themselves? I personally thing knowledge from entrepreneurs who learned their lessons in previous decades is valuable, but if what they're spouting is true it doesn't make any sense to listen to them, i.e. these thought leaders are desperate to tell you of their irrelevance. Same thing for every…

Someone is still needed to decide what the AI should do, and to harness and manage it. A CTO can do that with existing skills, and the resulting organization should converge quickly on near-zero need or want for human SWEs.

So goes the thinking, anyway. It's why my couple decades of experience and I still occasionally get to hear from rando cold recruiters desperate to sell someone a "pivot to AI," probably thinking they can lowball me by holding my mortgage over my head in order to screw three times the work out of me that they'd pay for.

I was in this business too long.

Re: If you started a company two years ago, many assumptions are no longer true

#86

Post by what »

xdennis wrote: post #77
kdazzle wrote: post #4

> the bottleneck is no longer engineering, it’s ____ 90% of blog articles created in the last two years are probably dead on arrival

Is that the original phrasing? Now it's: > The bottleneck is no longer engineering. It’s moving up the stack to judgment, customer insight for desired outcomes and distribution.

That’s the same phrasing?

Re: If you started a company two years ago, many assumptions are no longer true

#87

Post by pstuart »

skeeter2020 wrote: post #68
scyzoryk_xyz wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will take a lot more hand waving from the 70-something year-old Stanford professor who co-created far-up the chain management paradigms that run a good chunk of the economy. That context kinda changes things but what do I know.

Based on his own arguments a 70-something Stanford prof has no more knowledge, experience or credibility than someone who started 18 months ago. These guys don't get to have it both ways.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Blank

Re: If you started a company two years ago, many assumptions are no longer true

#89

Post by cladopa »

PunchyHamster wrote: post #24
kristianc wrote: post #2

Well of course it is, most startups are dead on arrival. The big pinch of salt I throw in with advice like this though is that startup failure rate hasn't dramatically shifted despite two decades of lean startup methodology, accelerators, and an entire cottage industry of startup advice. It's never the fault of the framework, mind you.

Arguably that mostly says stuff about average VC skill to pick winning idea. If you have good product idea, the methodology to get there mostly affect profit marigins, not whether it will be success or total failure

>Arguably that mostly says stuff about average VC skill to pick winning idea.

What happens is that the original idea rarely matters at all. It is the people that implements the idea what matters.

The original idea is almost always terrible, but great people pivot or change the idea gradually while having contact with reality.

Re: If you started a company two years ago, many assumptions are no longer true

#90

Post by DrewADesign »

coffeefirst wrote: post #30
karolist wrote: post #20

The post reads like written by someone who read too much about AI rather than tried to build a startup with the help of AI that they advocate so much. I'm still bounded by system design, UX, pricing and feature decisions, if not by the speed of code output, by the review time for sure. Yes, iterating is faster, but we're nowhere near agentic AI loops spitting out working products. Technically it's possible, but then…

Yeah… also, it’s just weird. Interfaces are important, they contain information and affordances, everything should not become a chatbot.

I usually find chatbot interfaces completely infuriating. I know the UX paradigm of click-reduction went the way of the dodo (and rightfully so, because it was based on bullshit research,) but I think it’s funny that completely removing the user’s agency and visibility into any process, and turning 3-click processes into 200 keystroke processes is the hot shit right now.
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