> 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. There are two assumptions that the author must be challenged on.
1. Enough people know about these methods
2. Of those people enough use the methods properly
Judging from my own experience I can’t confirm neither of these. Even those people that know the approach rarely have the rigor to treat startups as a series of experiments. Ego plays a large part.
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 developer - getting out of the building won't help. Nobody in the space worth talking to will talk to you, for starters.
It also forces you to focus on some extremely narrow problem definition. Often, these narrow problem definitions turn out to be features of existing platforms or in the ai age - artifacts of the current model generation.
> Nobody in the space worth talking to will talk to you, for starters.
There’s a skill issue there. I know a founder who’s able to get people to talk to him. As a result, his startup had F500 customers almost from the beginning.
But that’s the kind of thing that no amount of documented strategy and tactics is ever doing to be able to teach. I’ve watched it happening, but I can’t do it.
Methods improved the baseline, but also increased competition, keeping outcomes flat. Totally underweights systems and then blasts into methods not working. “Just do something different” is not a strategy... In fact, many great businesses look conventional early, and only later reveal their advantage.
Startup punditry is a business niche being capitalised on and it's being regarded in this article like a commune of knowledge. It's mildly insightful entertainment literature, with customers. On a philosophical level it's absolute value is tainted by its existence in the market. Most things are, but it living in the context of entrepreneurial endeavours, it taints it substantially more than most.
> 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. There are two assumptions that the author must be challenged on.
1. Enough people know about these methods
2. Of those people enough use the methods properly
Judging from my own experience I can’t confirm neither of these. Even those people that know the approach rarely have the rigor to treat startups as a series of experiments. Ego plays a large part.
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 developer - getting out of the building won't help. Nobody in the space worth talking to will talk to you, for starters.
It also forces you to focus on some extremely narrow problem definition. Often, these narrow problem definitions turn out to be features of existing platforms or in the ai age - artifacts of the current model generation.
> Nobody in the space worth talking to will talk to you, for starters.
There’s a skill issue there. I know a founder who’s able to get people to talk to him. As a result, his startup had F500 customers almost from the beginning.
But that’s the kind of thing that no amount of documented strategy and tactics is ever doing to be able to teach. I’ve watched it happening, but I can’t do it.
Methods improved the baseline, but also increased competition, keeping outcomes flat. Totally underweights systems and then blasts into methods not working. “Just do something different” is not a strategy... In fact, many great businesses look conventional early, and only later reveal their advantage.
I don't think this article is very good, at all.
Startup punditry is a business niche being capitalised on and it's being regarded in this article like a commune of knowledge. It's mildly insightful entertainment literature, with customers. On a philosophical level it's absolute value is tainted by its existence in the market. Most things are, but it living in the context of entrepreneurial endeavours, it taints it substantially more than most.