[pinkmuffinere]

If you believe that an achievement involves skill, and that people can hone than skill, then I think you should believe the people who have done it know on average good advice about how to do it. You don't have to accept the premise, you may believe that many people simply got lucky, and no skill is involved. I think most of us do believe that skill is involved in starting a business, so let's just assume it is. I think this implies that successful and well-intentioned business-starters should on average be able to give good advice. Not that they all will give correct advice every time, or that their advised approach will be correct for you every time. But that they on average "know something". My impression is that they largely agree with the method put forward in the lean startup. I haven't read all these other book tfa is dissing, but I think it's basically arguing a very difficult view. Why should I believe this random guy when the people that have done it many times are telling me he's wrong?

[techpression]

Survivorship bias. For every success you describe there are nine or so failures. Skill being involved doesn’t exclude being lucky, and I believe being lucky (some people call it timing) is of utmost importance.

[pinkmuffinere]

Ya, I respect this view. It is not the view I have, but I understand how you can have it. Eg, this is how I feel about most famous portfolio managers. Really my comment is addressed to the other view -- if it _isn't_ luck, then I think we should put some weight in what the successful practitioners say, and the ones I've heard do endorse the lean startup & co.

[apsurd]

But it doesn't make the survivors wrong about their experience. Two truths: their experience did happen roughly how they said it happened + they got very lucky.

Seems like all the other 9 that died insist on telling the one that survived that they were somehow wrong.

For sure, I do get that one can "do everything right" and still fail, I get that point, I get that there is no formula. But it seems like people want the reverse to be true: that everyone successful is only a lucky buffoon.

[techpression]

Sure, but I like it to my military service, I remember the good parts only, unless I start digging. Nobody wants to read about normal life, either you claim success or you claim failure, in between sells no copies.

[btilly]

Point missed. All of the reasons why you say this article should be dismissed, are irrelevant to the article's actual argument.

Here is the key principle.

Suppose that your odds of startup success are dominated by competition with other would-be startup founders. For example you compete for funding, good ideas, competent employees, and markets. If so, then the odds of success are set by the dynamics of that competition. In which case widespread access to effective advice on running startups does not improve the odds for a random founder succeeding. They just raise the quality of competition.

Think of it as being like a boxing tournament. If you learn how to box better, your odds of winning the tournament go up. If others learn to box better, your odds of winning the tournament go down. And even if everybody learns how to box better, we see the exact same number of winners.

Whether or not startups actually work this way is an empirical question. Based on a bunch of different data points, he argues that startups really do seem to work this way. And so the spread of good advice on running startups can't improve the odds of a random startup succeeding.

[gzread]

In which case if you are a successful startup founder who wants to be even more successful, you should give bad advice to your future competitors

[jeffreyrogers]

He's a pretty successful angel/early stage VC investor so he's not some random guy. His point doesn't seem to be that there's nothing to be learned building a successful business but that the existing methods are so formulaic they drive profits down since everyone copies the same ideas. Looking at the recent batch of AI companies that are being funded this does seem to be what's happening.