[jmathes]

Most. Startups. Fail.

If your startup operates on the assumption that your vision is flawless, you're not causing your vision to be less uncertain by refusing to notice the risk.

You're shooting the messenger. You've conflated trying to measure whether a strategy is flawed with causing it to be flawed. Pull your head out of the sand. It is not the fault of the book that people who have flawed ideas won't get rich without fixing their ideas.

[9oliYQjP]

I suppose I wasn't very clear, but what I was trying to say is that a lot of entrepreneurs are turning to Lean for a framework that will lead them to success. That's about as big of a misunderstanding as thinking being able to predict the weather will allow you to force a sunny day tomorrow. Eric Ries has never claimed to be able to do the latter, and I was just pointing that out. But right up there with misunderstanding #1 about Lean (i.e., "Lean means bootstrapped cheap right?") has got to be this particular misunderstanding.

What I meant by jury is still out, is that we might find that the framework suggested in The Lean Startup actually increases success rates amongst startups in addition to being a model for revealing truth. Revealing truth faster will allow startups to extend their runway and if we find that most successful businesses only require X pivots on average before they start to profitable, we very well might see startups be able to accomplish these X pivots succeed where they may have followed a more traditional launch and pray model and achieved fewer than X pivots, running out of runway.

If it sounds like I'm trying to be negative about the book, I'm not. It's fantastic and I'm absolutely suggesting everybody buy a copy :P

[amirmc]

> a lot of entrepreneurs are turning to Lean for a framework that will lead them to success ... But right up there with misunderstanding #1 about Lean ... has got to be this particular misunderstanding

I agree with what you're saying but when the strap line of the book is "How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Companies" [emphasis added] the misunderstanding is, well ... understandable.

[9oliYQjP]

You're right, it's on the cover. I have jumped right into the book but haven't read anywhere in there claims that Lean will cause success. It's pretty modest in the claims. I find it interesting that it's blatantly on the cover though. I'm not convinced this would let me succeed but I am convinced it would help me from driving off a cliff into a disaster of a situation where I have wasted a lot of time and effort on a product that it turns out the market doesn't want.

[jmathes]

The cover says "How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Companies". That means:

- There exist at least two entrepreneurs today - At least two of them use continuous innovation - At least two of those who use continuous innovation create radically successful companies - This book will tell you how they do it