[gchokov]

While I do see the value of validation, this is not a silver bullet. People try to simplify things, find patterns, but this cannot always work. There are so many reasons why I would not want to validate things: - Sometimes, people will not tell you what they want, because often they do not know what they want, until you show it to them. Someone smarter than me said this before. - People judge from their experience. You can have the perfect group to validate with.. but their experience will trick you.

Building a product is an art. There way too many things one should consider based on his experience and intelligence, not everything can be quantified and calculated (well, it can be, but still with assumptions, and once you assume...). As one of my favorite photographers says, "There are no rules for good photographs, there are just good photographs". Same can be said when building a product..

[wpietri]

It sounds to me like you haven't had much practice validating things. Nobody serious about this sort of validation would suggest you ask people what they want. Instead, when you think you know what people really want, it's your job to prove that.

Suppose that you make something that you're convinced is the best product in the world. You work for years, you spend millions. And then you launch. It turns out that nobody cares; you go bankrupt. Someone might ask: "Was it really a great product?" We could argue the answer to that, but I think it's the wrong question.

Businesses need to be sustainable. Some ideas work, some don't. I think the best thing we can do is to a) maximize our chances of success, and b) minimize the cost of our failures. I believe the only way to do that is to continuously and aggressively test our hypotheses. Otherwise, investment just ends up being the way we fool ourselves a little longer.

Products aren't art. They're commerce. If you want to do art, just do art.

[vdaniuk]

"There are no rules for good photographs, there are just good photographs". I disagree with this and think that it is a self-defeating, irrational attitude.

Sure, validation is not a silver bullet. However, lots of startups make it or break due to luck and no-one(yet) can't eliminate randomness in a stochastic(debatable) system like technology entrepreneurship ecosystem. Validation helps to decrease the chance of failing, though. The famous quote by George Box reads "Remember that all models are wrong; the practical question is how wrong do they have to be to not be useful."

Also validation is not listening to what people tell, it's also observing actions of users when they interact with the MVP.

[dunmalg]

>"There are no rules for good photographs, there are just good photographs". I disagree with this and think that it is a self-defeating, irrational attitude.

Yeah, I think he's misinterpreting what his photographer friend means. There are TONS of rules for good photographs, everything from technical ("sufficient lighting") all the way up to art theory ("rule of thirds"). The guy's point was probably that any subject, at any time, can possibly be photographed in a way the conforms to the requirements of an artistically pleasing image. Trying to fit that notion to the idea that entrepreneurs should just leap for the stars without checking to see if their figurative lens cap is off is not really very sound.

[gchokov]

It's funny that I mentioned randomness in my second comment as well :)

I tend to agree with you to some extent, even about the quote for the comment. But, startups as an example fails to me, because as we all know, most of the startups fail anyway.

p.s. there are rules for good photographs but following the rules can only put you on bar with other people. Learns the rules so that you can break them. Learn to validate so that you know when NOT to validate.

[vdaniuk]

Hm, I have an interesting thought. If "rules" is a consensus about best practices it is a standard model of the particular domain. Conditions of narrative manipulation and tragedy of the commons apply.

With that in mind, one should break the rules only if they have a high degree of confidence in their ability to discover a model that is better than standard model or understanding that the entire modelling approach is tainted. However, Dunning-Kruger effect hypothesis states that less competent are irrationally sure of themselves and vice versa. Are we in a situation where most actors on the market are trying to break the rules to their own detriment?

[noonespecial]

>"There are no rules for good photographs, there are just good photographs".

There are also lots and lots (and more lots) of bad photographs. There might not be specific rules for taking really stand-out pictures, but there sure are good rules for what not to do.

[aeden]

Photographers take many more bad photos than good ones. Entrepreneurs fail more often than they succeed. We just tend to avoid showing bad photos and talking about failed businesses in public.

[kisielk]

And yet a lot of times the best photographs are the ones that break the rules of what not to do...

[zacharycohn]

On purpose. Bad photographers break rules they don't know exist. Good photographers break rules on purpose, in very specific ways, to achieve a very specific effect.

[YL108]

You are also right! I think if you've build several products before it's more easy to choose the right path building great products. But I do also see a lot of people just building something behind closed doors without thinking about the problem they really want to solve. Of course, justyo.co for example... I don't think there was a huge need in sending YO's :D

[gchokov]

Yes, when you've built several products, you definitely start to see things that work and things that do not work and you gain experience. Again, I am not against validation, it just should be used moderately and not exclusively as a key indicator if you should build something or not. Products like justyo.co popup once in a while and due to some pretty random events at some point they become a hype. I tend to think the creators are having a lot of fun as well, without really thinking for monetization that much.

[thenomad]

There are lots and lots of rules for good visual composition, of which "good photographs" are a subset.

Some people instinctively understand them. Some people have spent years painstakingly learning them, and now choose to break them from time to time.

But there are plenty of rules, and if you're not already a genius or an expert, learning and following those rules is a reliable way to improve your photography.