Ideas Are Overrated: Startup Guru Eric Ries' Radical New Theory

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."<p>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.<p>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.<p>It's better to have unhappy customers than no customers at all.

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.

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

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.<p>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?).<p>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.

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.

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

You know, I used to agree with this statement: "Ideas are overrated." Until I came up with an idea that was not.<p>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.<p>Once it's done, then it becomes obvious - but that's not necessarily true before the fact.<p>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?<p>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.

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, &#38; 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 ?

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.

Idea is a single word. You can neither say if it is overrated, nor analyze the market on the basis of a single word.<p>— But can I write bullshit articles with a flamebait title interviewing some guy no one takes seriously? Yes, you can.<p>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.<p>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.<p>People that have ideas unrelated to the demand usually write this kind of interviews.

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.<p>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.<p>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.

Isn't a theory a kind of idea?

Ship early and listen to real customers - then adapt.<p>This reminds me of the Customer Development model championed in Blank's "The Four Steps To The Epiphany".<p>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.

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 =&#62; 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.<p>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)

Eric's gotta love that popping collar picture.