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temp8830 | on: We Have Learned Nothing
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.

apsurd | parent | next
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.

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loeber | parent | next
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.
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lumost | parent | next
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.
antonvs | parent
> 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.