[melvinmt]

"I'm personally quite skeptical of all the Lean Startup methodology, I think the really great companies did something of a quantum improvement that really differentiated them from everybody else. They typically did not do massive customer surveys. The people who ran these companies would often, not always, have mild forms of Asperger's, so they were not actually that influenced, not that easily deterred by what other people thought or told them to do. I do think we're way too focused on iteration as a modality and not enough trying to have a virtual ESP link with the public and figuring it out ourselves."

Glad to finally see this confirmed by someone who knows what he's talking about.

[Iftheshoefits]

Almost nobody in this industry has "mild forms of Asperger's." That canard is used far too often, and far too often as an excuse for something much more simple: these people are socially indifferent, to be polite. Some of them are merely socially inept, but others (many? most?) are, to be quite vulgar about it, simply assholes.

[serf]

>> Almost nobody in this industry has "mild forms of Asperger's."

but you're wrong.

http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/9.12/aspergers_pr.htm...

http://blog.codinghorror.com/software-developers-and-asperge...

(not that I put much faith in Gawker..) http://gawker.com/5885196/the-tech-industrys-asperger-proble...

http://www.nature.com/news/2011/111102/full/479025a.html

[applecore]

That's, like, not even the fourth most point of that quote.

[jdimov]

What's wrong with being an asshole? The fact that you can't handle it is your problem, not the asshole's. An asshole is simply someone who won't allow themselves to be swayed by anyone else's ignorant opinions.

[Diamons]

Exactly. That's also one of my biggest gripes with yc - Dont be an asshole. If I want to be an asshole, that's my god given right. I say things how I see them and am under no obligation to sugar coat my words. Sorry the chemicals in your brain are signaling discomfort, but that's your job to suit up not mine.

[acomms]

My brain is signalling that you may be missing the point.

[DanielBMarkham]

Yeah but it's bloviating. Here's why: at some point you have to check to see if what you're doing is actually taking you somewhere. Sure, maybe you use magic rocks or a psychic telephone hotline to get your vision -- his "we focus too much on incremental" point may be spot-on -- but at some point you gotta have an OODA loop. You gotta stop and take measure of what the heck is going on.

So perhaps he could have gone somewhere interesting with this, it ended up as a rhetorical drive-by shooting.

Having said all of that, the man knows a zillion times more stuff than I do. I'm simply pointing out that this quote is so woefully incomplete as to be sophistry.