
Lean Startups fail for these 3 reasons, but they didn’t tell you in the book - daegloe
https://medium.com/what-i-learned-building/16f6de3b7512
======
parasubvert
This felt like a Broscience article targeted at Startups instead of
bodybuilders.

Tl;dr 1. the founder(s) quits too early due to lack of conviction ; 2. the
founder(s) don't understand how to fundraise or company-build; 3. The venture
capital market is in a period of risk aversion. And some stuff about how
amazing Sean Parker is.

His controversial line is "Startups do not fail because they build products
that nobody wants". And he is using his own taste as a barometer of "want".
Sorry , it doesn't work that way.

~~~
krmmalik
That's the second time i've read the term "BroScience" today but i still don't
understand what it means? Can you share some insight?

~~~
dasil003
I'd never heard the term, but I immediately understood it in context. It's the
presentation of an opinion as being based on logic when in fact it is based on
a masculine over-confidence and projection of power.

~~~
krmmalik
Thank you. That helps quite alot.

------
krmmalik
I've worked with a fair number of Start-Ups as well. My observations have been
very different to the article - not that i read it all; it was rather
incoherent.

Not every Start-Up i've worked with has had the same issue, but these are my
general observations.

1\. Founder doesn't release product early enough due to an inherent fear of
vulnerability 2\. Too much focus on getting investment instead of gaining
traction. 3\. Too busy building systems instead of solving customer problems
4\. Dysfunctional Team or poor working culture.

~~~
rdudekul
Your points do ring true.

Here are a few more mistakes founders make:

1\. Resistant to talk to target market

2\. Focused on adding more/better features

3\. Involved in pleasing one or two early customers

4\. Taking nay sayers seriously

5\. Losing steam at later stages when growth does not happen as planned

~~~
krmmalik
Could you elaborate on the 'taking nay sayers' seriously?

~~~
filip01
I'm guessing: There will always be people who think they know why your idea
won't work. It's in the nature of the game
([http://www.paulgraham.com/swan.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/swan.html)
etc). Founders who take these people's opinions seriously are more likely to
give up.

------
mindcrime
_The entire Lean Startup school of thought is based on the premise that most
startups fail because they build products that nobody wants._

That's not even really right. It's more of a folksy and over-generalized
statement about the Lean Startup approach. You can fail in any number of other
ways: developing a product that people _do_ want, but not knowing how to reach
the customers to let them know it exists; developing a product that people
want but not at a price point that people are willing to pay; developing a
product that people do want, but that isn't sufficiently differentiated from
the competition (including its substitutes, or the status-quo); etc. If you
read _The Four Steps To The Epiphany_ \- one of the seminal works that the
Lean Startup approach is rooted in - you'll see that there are steps in there
for dealing with all of these "other" issues: pricing, distribution,
marketing, etc... This definitely goes beyond a simplistic "you built
something nobody wanted" scenario.

------
vlokshin
Yes, the article was lengthy and a bit all over the place -- but the general
negativity towards it in these comments is a bit much.

My assumption is that the author is not a hardcore engineer by trade, but it's
apparent that he's got a decent understanding on the inner-workings of an
industry we're all a part of (or trying to be a part of).

Engineers need to pair with thinkers like Francis. To me, he seems like an
amazing compliment to a conservative engineer.

Lengthy read? yes. A bit incoherent? Maybe. "A Broscience article targeted at
Startups instead of bodybuilders"? No. That's plain "'ignant".

~~~
phr4ts
"Yes, the article was lengthy and a bit all over the place" \- Very true.

"author is not a hardcore engineer by trade" \- you don't have to be an
engineer to value objective reasoning.

The lean system is simply the application of basic scientific principles to
business.

The principles are:

1\. Formulate Hypothesis

2\. Test Hypothesis

3\. Pivot

In the book adapt - why success begins from failure, you would get why the
word "lean" was chosen.

It's because of survival. If you bet the whole farm and your bet is wrong.
It's game over. That's why the lean system admonishes that start-ups try small
experiments.

------
freework
I think to be a successful startup, you need to exist somewhere between 'grand
visionary' and 'lean'. The startup I work for now could be described as a
'grand visionary' company. Our CEO is a very wealthy non-technical guy who is
self-financing his 'vision' of what he thinks a travel website should be. The
company is definitely going to fail (as do 99% of all startups), mostly
because this 'vision' is extremely complicated, muddy and at times incoherent.

On the other hand, some companies are the opposite. They are some companies
that are completely driven by A+B testing. They 'pivot' to a completely new
idea every other week. These companies all end up doing some kind of project
with the word 'analytics' somewhere in it. These projects are almost always
crap, and their success is mainly tied to how aggressive their sales/marketing
people were.

Being 'lean driven' is a bad idea, but abandoning all lean ideals is worse.

------
jonnathanson
Comparatively speaking, it's easy to find a genuine need in a marketplace.
It's much harder to build the _right_ solution to that need. A certain class
of startups fails because they builds hammers, and then goes looking for
nails. But others fail because they find a nail, then build a screwdriver.

~~~
danthewireman
Building a popular solution seems to be even harder than building a right one,
and that seems to be the real goal, in terms of financial success.

~~~
jonnathanson
With respect, I think we're saying the same thing here and just getting a
little caught up on the semantics. It's hard to become a "popular solution"
without being a "right solution" for a significant number of people. Right x
scale = popular.

While it's possible to become popular without being right, that's not
sustainable. So, for all intents and purposes, I'm equating "right" with
"popular" in this case.

Of course, there's a whole lot that goes into making a "right" idea a popular
idea, and that's nontrivial. Did not mean to gloss over that. But my broader
point was about how coming up with a right-fitting solution is much harder
than identifying a need in the first place.

------
jheriko
this brushes over the most obvious reason and its evidence almost immediately.

i've always felt that taking other people's money, i.e. venture capital,
before you have a viable (i.e. running and profitable) business is almost
certainly a bad idea and its indicative of desperation. its a massive and
risky shortcut in many cases.

nobody i know who was successful in business even entertained the idea, let
alone did it. they saved money, scraped it or just poured their spare time in
to succeed. starting out e.g. £100k in debt but with £100k in the bank just
sounds dangerous... in my experience people are terrible with money,
especially if its not their own in any way...

if you start properly without taking other people's money in the form of
loans, credit or venture capital then failing is exceptionally difficult
regardless as to anything else...

~~~
jheriko
(although actually there are many examples where the prerequisite money is
needed - this is where you should realise you are not equipped to start your
business and learn how to make money before trying to - you aren't
automagically entitled to a chance to fulfil your dreams - you need to earn it
and it might actually be impossible, deal with it)

------
lazyBilly
There wasn't as much "lean startup" in this article as I would have assumed
via the title. I don't know that I necessarily agree with the final assertion
that the "lean startup" is dead. I honestly see, rightly or wrongly, a lot of
VC's, YC included, moving towards a more lean and mean, revenue-centric model
as capital markets get more conservative. Which is strikingly similar to a
lean startup. Then the question becomes, if you're profitable, can the
acceleration provided by VC capital push you over the top? Lean B2B plays
aren't necessarily the kind of internet land-grabs we've recently seen out of
the valley.

------
antitrust
It seems to me that startups fail for one or more of these two basic reasons:

(1) The product can't make money. (Corollary: at first, the product only needs
to convince investors it can make money, and then it can be sold to large web
firms for great profit.)

(2) The firm can't complete the product.

I have seen all combinations of the two above.

I think the tendency on a lot of self-help websites is to try to give advice
for accomplishing a product according to what has worked for other people.

However, any startup is a business, and the principles of the two rules above
still apply: find something that you can sell, and then find a way to
accomplish at least a 1.0 version of it.

------
stephanerangaya
TL;DR of this article:

Startups fail for three very different reasons:

\- The founder is not playing a big enough game, does not have enough
conviction, is not confident enough in how BIG his idea is, and is not
aggressive enough in execution, ends up quitting too early because he doesn’t
have enough money to pay rent and groceries. Needs a Sean Parker.

\- The founder does not understand how to do company building and fundraising.
Needs a Matt Cohler.

\- There is a capital markets problem (opportunity!) and there is not enough
risk capital available.

------
pbreit
A lot of good observations and passages but ultimately difficult to digest.
There is certainly plenty of room for lean startups but thank goodness for
Uber, et al.

------
liquidise
It has been many years since i have taken latin, but i am still struggling to
understand his usage of "a priori". Am i reading this paragraph wrong?

------
rburhum
Thank you for the article. It was a great read.

About other comments, don't worry too much about them. Everybody that doesn't
run their own company is an expert in startups these days.

~~~
phr4ts
The author of the article was attacking someone or something that people
believe. It's expected he'd be attacked in return.

My bet is that the author of that article has either not read the book "lean
startup" or he flipped quickly through the book like i did his article.

------
vgoklani
This article is too damn wordy, I kept scrolling, and it just kept going on
and on ...

~~~
phr4ts
The guy should focus on novels. He's not using his talent properly.

------
taskstrike
Team matters so much more than anything else. You can apply lean startup
perfectly and have a team that just can't execute.

I am wary of methodology driven startups vs a great team tackling a general
idea/market.

~~~
mindcrime
_I am wary of methodology driven startups vs a great team tackling a general
idea /market._

Those aren't mutually exclusive. How about a great team, employing a great
methodology, pursuing a general idea?

~~~
saraid216
Perfection is always ideal, but if you find a great team player who just
doesn't believe in your methodology, which do you pick?

~~~
mindcrime
If they're a "great team player" they don't have to _believe_ in the
methodology, but they have to agree to work within it. Unless, that is, they
can sell me on a different approach.

------
badclient
You know lean start up has serious flaws _at least in how it 's being taught_
when you see two companies attacking the same market/product only to see one
company die with the conclusion that there isn't product/market fit.

Lean is big on experiments and sounds great in theory but as a complete system
it is very lacking.

~~~
mindcrime
There's definitely a disconnect somewhere, because half (or more) of the
people writing about Lean Startups, Customer Development, etc., clearly don't
get it at all. I'm almost at a point where I'm not going to bother reading any
post that mentions "lean startup" or "customer development" in the title
unless the domain is steveblank.com.

I think _part_ of the problem is that the "lean startup" approach inherits a
lot of (or all of) Steve Blank's "Customer Development Methodology", and CD is
not a quick and easy thing to learn. I mean, the basic gist of it can be
taught in 5 minutes, but the actual methodology is _very_ elaborate and
detailed. But if all you read is the "Lean Startup" book, or a few blogs on
the topic, and don't actually sit down and read _The Four Steps To The
Epiphany_ (or _The Startup Owner 's Manual_) directly - and probably a few
times - you probably don't know enough about the topic to really use it, or
comment on it.

For perspective, I'll offer this: I first read TFSTTE about 2 years ago, and
have been incorporating the approach into what we do at Fogbeam Labs ever
since. I've also read the Eric Ries book, and several other titles on the
topic, and a ton of blog posts on the topic. I've also attended Lean Startup
Circle meetings and follow the LSC mailing list. And I'll still quickly admit
that I have a lot to learn. I think I could teach the basics to somebody else
right now, based on what I know, but I'm not even close to being a real expert
on this. And I've been at ground-level, actually implementing this (albeit not
full-time) for two years or so..

It's a bit like Agile Development in a way... "Lean Startup" and "Agile
Development" have both become trending buzzwords that are often flaunted by
people who don't really understand all the depth and nuance of the topic,
which results in an inevitable backlash (also by people who don't really
understand the topic in any depth).

