[Translation] 6 misconceptions in the methodology "Lean Startup" ("Lean Startup")

Hello habrazhiteli! Every day a huge number of startups appear and disappear in the world. In different countries, in different areas. Many entrepreneurs dream of finding a formula for success in a book about personal growth or at conferences and other events. Erik Rice's book “Lean startup,” which marked the beginning of a popular movement in the startup culture, deserves great attention. The “Lean Startup” model, which is gaining popularity in Russia and the CIS , helps build start-ups with low resources, by reducing development cycles. Everything in this model seems to be very good and must read for entrepreneurs, but some of the nuances are described below and will be very useful for your future and current projects.

I'm tired of hearing about the “Lean startup” methodology

No offense to Eric Rice, who invented some very useful corporate terms that are now widely used and found throughout the culture of Silicon Valley [for example: pivot, minimum viable product ( MVP ), and innovation )], but there is a lot that I think is wrong - groundless - of the whole concept. Here are some of the problems:

1. The Lean Startup model encourages individual functions as opposed to creating a complete product.

Silicon Valley is obsessed with companies that are built around a single function ( feature ), which is used in a small number of buying companies. Think of it - social apps on the example of Mertado merchant acquired by Groupon, or Summify - a social network summary that was acquired by Twitter. This is an epidemic. But customers, in contrast to acquired companies, need to solve their problems, mainly with full-fledged products.
And, at the same time, it seems that many entrepreneurs interpreted the Lean Startup model as an excuse for working with iterations and building a product in stages.
What is the result? Many companies are built around defective features that are not important to almost anyone, and least of all for customers.

2. Negative impact on team motivation

The pace of continuous innovation that the MVP model requires is complex, if not more. Look at SnapTax Intuit , which tests 500 innovations over the course of two and a half months of the tax period. And if you count, this is up to 11 tests per day! This hectic pace will surely demoralize your team.
In addition, it seems to me a waste of developer time. After all, A / B testing, or multivariate testing, is a well-known method these days. In practice, here at Bislr , we find that about 70 percent of what we want to check will ultimately not make a big difference to a business. True entrepreneurship is to find out that many of the functions and events around them will sometimes bring little value.
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3. Such products are hard to love.

Customers need to be prepared for the fact that their favorite applications may leave the market, but in fact, you need to worry less about it. “Lean” products by their definition do not strongly attract. These are products that are not easy to love, and that is why companies that buy them usually do this in order to immediately cover a product or service ( in many cases, companies buy startups only because of a team or technology, and not because that this is a good business - translator comment ).
Perhaps the technical guru Guy Kawasaki summarized it better when he was recently asked about the interactions with the products: “A great product attracts. It does not consist of functions made in a few weeks. As your needs become more meaningful, you will find that you do not need another product. ”

4. Discounts the product architecture

Companies that focus on MVP tend to save on product architecture, which is very important. If you do not have time to build the entire product correctly, you will also not have time to invest in architecture in the future. Unfortunately, there will be no decision on the product architecture that could determine your success or failure as a company.
Many companies competed with Evernote in the early days. Some were even bundled with a more colorful user interface. But the snag is that nothing happened. Why? In a word: Architecture.
Evernote is built around people collecting, storing and retrieving all their memories and notes on the Internet. Architecturally, the product was built to scale in a living ecosystem designed for independent software developers to create around their platform using a program that Evernote calls “Trunk” ( or “Core” - translator comment ).

5. Leads to misunderstanding with your investors.

I am for building companies that have multiple exit strategies ( translator, IPO, sale, merger, etc. ). The path to IPO is not correct for every company. But creating a company around a small number of functions specifically to be acquired - it seems to me just wrong.
If you are the founder, then a quick sale, of course, may be the way to an extraordinary profitable return of funds. But this is completely unfair to managers, managers, and other people who have contributed to the product and helped at specific stages in building a company to success.

6. It distorts the way people are hired in the Valley.

I think here, of course, about Nick D'Aloisio , the 17-year-old founder of Summly, who was acquired by Yahoo. Personally, I do not know anything about Nick, but I know that $ 30 million is a lot of money that was paid for the work of a 17-year-old guy.
Nick may be the most talented developer on the planet (even if his basic skills are not sufficiently developed so far), but what are we doing to get the next Dropbox or Evernote, if you take such a talent as Nick prematurely? I think that Nick and his company would have achieved more as an independent company.

So what's the alternative?

Take and look at the MVP model with disbelief. Most of the time, it is used at the earliest stage of the company's life cycle, when there is little money, and time to market is all. Constant iterations, but not in such a way that your team puts at risk of loss of strength and motivation. Build your business to the last, make pivots until your company can challenge the market.
And when more and more companies are interested in the accreditation of your startup, you and your team ask yourself if this is really worth it. These are transactions that will not create value, and it is believed that this can be avoided.

About the author of the original article : Michael Sharki is co-founder and CEO of Bislr. He started his first business to impress a girl - without knowing anything about business, his career spawned many successful companies. As a teenager in Australia, he created two businesses: an artisans catalog and an ordering system for the mining industry. At the same time, Michael helped his brother, Chris, at the start of his Stayz. Like HomeAway in the United States, Stayz was later sold to Fairfax Digital for $ 12,700,000 . Together, Michael and Chris founded Sharki Media, a technology-based marketing agency to help other businesses build successful sales and marketing automation. In 2011, Michael co-founded Bislr, a smart marketing operating system (marketing automation, etc.). Michael was featured on TechCrunch, The Wall Street Journal, CRM Magazine, Reuters, Sydney Morning Herald, and ABC News.

A start-up from Ukraine, Yaroslav Bosenko , who also translated the article “Average developer's income depending on a programming language,” helped to translate.
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