
Ideas Are Overrated: Startup Guru Eric Ries' Radical New Theory - Liu
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/08/st_qareis/
======
martinkallstrom
I heard a different wording of "ship early, ship often" tonight. One that is
to me a little more tought provoking even though it says exactly the same
thing: "It's better to have unhappy customers than no customers at all."

Because unhappy customers provide feedback that allows you to change your
course it's the same thinking as Ship Early or Fail Fast and the rest of the
lean mantras. But those have been repeated enough to loose their meaning.

So it was refreshing to hear a rephrasing (that actually predates Eric Ries'
lean startup methodology by two full decades) that wasn't as easily dismissed
as plain common sense.

It's better to have unhappy customers than no customers at all.

------
petegrif
Eric - it's great to see you eating your own dogfood. Initial idea = write
book on lean startup. Launch plan = make sure every human being on the planet
hears about it. Adapt = hunt down the few poor bastards who haven't head about
it yet. Adapt again = hunt them down some more. right now you are a tidal wave
engulfing the media space. Gotta hand it to ya.

~~~
DanielRibeiro
Not to mention the "A/B testing the shit of everything" part.

------
jsdalton
I always thought Henry Ford "won" because he innovated on the manufacturing
process with his introduction of the assembly line, which allowed him to
produce better and cheaper automobiles more quickly than his competitors.

I had never heard that he embraced a "continuous deployment" model, and this
short interview obviously doesn't get into details.

~~~
atirip
Yes, his idea was assembly line, which by Eric Ries was completely overrated?

And Google - how do you make better search engine by "listening your
customers"? No, you don't, you need an idea of pagerank foe example. Without
that worthless idea you are toast, no matter how much you listen...

Oh and that thermonuclear reactor that we all dream about and what will
resolve all energy problems on earth. No idea how to build it. Listen
customers? Good luck with that.

~~~
relix
* Customers want higher quality, cheaper cars -> Create a production process that satisfies these requests.

* Customers want better search results -> Create an algorithm that finds better results.

* Customers want clean, abundant energy -> Find out about the thermonuclear reactor.

You're looking at it from the wrong side.

If customers didn't want better search results but instead wanted portals,
Google would have died, and Yahoo and Altavista would be about as big as
Google right now. How do you know they want better search results? By
listening to their needs.

Your product-idea might be the best thing since slice bread, but it's
worthless if no one wants it.

PS: I'm not saying Google or Ford used this process, of course. But they are
extraordinary companies. Also, if enough companies try, at least some should
come close to satisfying the customer's needs just by chance and some
intuition. You don't hear about the companies that had a great idea,
implemented it, and then dropped dead for lack of customers.

~~~
billybob
"If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses."
— Henry Ford

~~~
jamesbritt
Citation needed

~~~
pnp
Looks like Ford may have thought that way, but didn't say it:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2938254>

------
asreal
In principle, I can appreciate the need to be 'lean' and nimble when starting
out, however, these concepts are not new, and Eric Reis certainly did not
spearhead this method.

Eric Reis has done a great job at making noise and he has demonstrated that he
is a consummate salesman. While the concepts that he espouses aren't exactly
innovative, there is no doubt, a deep appeal, particularly to those who are
seduced by the 'gold rush fever' that is driving this current tech
boom(bubble?).

Ultimately, it strikes me that this guy is a huckster who is fast becoming the
spokesperson for a growing league of entrepreneur-wannabes in search for a
piece of 'social' pie.

~~~
Udo
Exactly! "Ideas are overrated" is neither radical nor is it new. Somewhere we
all read these points before, probably many times before, and in some
instances we read and posted them on HN. Why this is suddenly celebrated like
mana from heaven is beyond me.

------
dasil003
This might be a good headline for WSJ, but it's just sad that Wired calls this
radical and new. How far they have fallen.

------
dkrich
I still have a hard time buying into the lean startup method hook, line, and
sinker. I think there is quite a bit of evidence in support of it, but a lot
that flies in the face of it as well.

Certain features, for which presentation isn't critical, I would certainly
want to deploy early and often. But that also seems to be contradictory to the
dictum "execution is everything." Of course building something with excellent
execution quickly is ideal, but if you release your product before it is what
you believe is your best work, then aren't you kind of hurting what little
chance you've got?

To draw an example, Palm had a touch screen phone and apps available for
download in 2004. But their execution wasn't very good, and their software
provided an awful experience. In 2007 Apple released the exact same idea but
with far better execution, and the rest is history.

I'm not saying the lean startup method doesn't work, I just think it is highly
dependent upon the product strategy.

~~~
wpietri
Apple isn't the best example for two reasons.

One, they're an established brand selling to a mature market. Startups are new
brands selling to early adopters. Early adopters are very forgiving.

Two, Apple also iterates a ton, just like a lean startup. The difference is
that they do it internally. The iPod went through circa 100 prototypes. That
compares with 4-7 for the typical consumer electronics company.

If you are as well-capitalized as Apple, by all means iterate in private. Most
of us aren't so lucky, though.

~~~
dkrich
Yeah, and I'm not denying that. My point is that if a product is released just
to see whether it gains traction without ideal execution, then how can you
know whether it was the faulty execution that led to failure? Maybe if the
user were more intrigued from the beginning with better execution, better
traction could be achieved.

~~~
wpietri
Suppose you release a product with execution you believe perfect and it flops.
The problem could be the idea, but it still could be your execution.

Whether you're Apple or a nobody, you still have to keep iterating until it's
right. The way you tell what to try next is by studying how the last one went.
You just eventually decide to work on a different idea.

You can never truly know whether a repeated flop is due to your idea or your
execution.

------
marcamillion
You know, I used to agree with this statement: "Ideas are overrated." Until I
came up with an idea that was not.

There are some ideas that are so complex - but then they are so simple - that
it's hard for me to see other people coming up with that exact idea in that
way.

Once it's done, then it becomes obvious - but that's not necessarily true
before the fact.

For instance, Google's PageRank is so obviously the best way to rank links
(based on the number of incoming links) - but who woulda thunk before they did
it?

In fact, when they were just starting out, many of the search players thought
it was a dumb idea...which goes to show that they under appreciated the
novelty of the idea.

~~~
nkassis
Actually a few people were experimenting with the idea before the Google guys
did it. They just did it better. In the plex talks about that in the first
couple chapters.

------
dxbydt
He says 501 companies had the idea of the IC engine, all but 1 ( ie. Ford )
died. Ok. But its not the idea being overrated that killed 500 and kept 1
alive, cause they all had the same idea to begin with. What killed the rest
was - competition, traction, capitalism, free markets, better execution, call
it whatever. If the idea ie. IC engines, was overrated, you wouldn't get a car
from the entire 501. What happened instead was - you got 501 car guys, & over
time 500 car guys vanished and 1 car guy survived. That's what you'd expect
anyways. So how does one go from that to dissing ideas themselves ?

------
sayemm
I find it most ironic that the customer development guys are so fond of
preaching their philosophy of how to properly build businesses, yet they're
failed entrepreneurs and have yet to successfully prove themselves. They're
better marketers/bloggers than they are entrepreneurs, buyer beware.

~~~
stoph
I think this is where the mantra, "Those who cannot do, teach," comes from.

------
vrode
Idea is a single word. You can neither say if it is overrated, nor analyze the
market on the basis of a single word.

— But can I write bullshit articles with a flamebait title interviewing some
guy no one takes seriously? Yes, you can.

There are pure ideas that just occur on an impulse. And there are ideas that
satisfy a given demand. If you skip one of the steps when implementing an idea
that satisfies the demand, you bail on the demand, not on some abstract over-
hyped quality that serves no purpose.

In my opinion the really worthwhile ideas go alongside with the demand, and
making sure that the demand is met is no overrated practice. Why? Because the
demand is just a social definition of a problem that needs a solution.

People that have ideas unrelated to the demand usually write this kind of
interviews.

------
Zimahl
The Model T is not a very good car, even considering the time. It's about as
simple transmission as you can get, terrible brakes, a gas tank under the
front seat (how convenient), would roll over in heartbeat, you'd get soaked
when it rained and freeze in the winter, and only came in black.

It was wildly successful because Henry Ford knew one thing - customers wanted
cars but they couldn't afford the current offerings. Everything he did was to
make the car affordable to the common man.

I will disagree that timing doesn't matter. Ford was definitely at the right-
place at the right-time. 5 or 10 years later and he probably wouldn't have
been so successful, someone would've beaten him to the punch. The plain fact
is that while timing isn't everything, it can't be considered irrelevant.

~~~
FredBrach
And also, can we say that when Ford released the T, his company was a startup?

------
steveplace
Isn't a theory a kind of idea?

~~~
eries
Believe me, I didn't pick that title.

~~~
ashrust
A better one might have been: "Ideas aren't (successful) companies"...
couldn't agree more on the continuous deployment.

------
grannyg00se
Ship early and listen to real customers - then adapt.

This reminds me of the Customer Development model championed in Blank's "The
Four Steps To The Epiphany".

I agree and work toward that philosophy even though it is sometimes difficult.
For example, finding a manufacturer that can provide fast turnaround may be
difficult and more expensive but it would probably be worth it for the
additional agility.

------
FredBrach
Correct me if I'm wrong but for a startup, you only have one chance. So you
have to pick the right idea then the idea is all for a startup => For me, the
right thing for a startup founder is to transform himself to a typical
custommer to find the right idea. Concerning the iteration process, that's a
question of beta testing. So you have the right idea, now you have to make a
good application with it which is something different.

In conclusion, I would say that the good equation is: Idea+Ship=Startup. (I
assume the beta testing phase is as easy as programming or whatever)

~~~
badclient
Your definition of a start-up is outdated by about a decade.

------
marcamillion
Eric's gotta love that popping collar picture.

