I didn't attack his personality - I attacked 1) the content of the presentation 2) the presentation of the presentation and 3) cautioned against accepting this presentation as great because of the source. My argument wasn't very detailed, but it certainly wasn't an attack on the presenter.

You, on the other hand, did not defend the content of the presentation, but rather cited some qualifications of the author - ironically, just what I warned against accepting as proof of credibility.

Your point: Author is theorizing without connection to reality, more literally "This is academic gobbledy gook."

My counterpoint: Steven Blank has vast first-hand experience in startups.

Any more questions?

Academic opinions are almost always formed from experiments, and this presentation is academic.

My point was not that the author is theorizing without connection to reality. My point was I've heard the same thing said in half a sentence that he took dozens of slides to say.

But it's got that nice academic sheen!

What's the half sentence?

Don't neglect sales.

Certainly good advice but it may leave HN readers with the idea that hiring a VP of Sales person early is enough. Blank explicitly rejects this and suggests that early sales are the responsibility of the founders. In particular they have to treat their product as a hypothesis, which few successful sales folks are able to do. They treat objections as something to overcome. Only the founders can balance the question of whether they are talking to the right prospects with the right message about the right features.

Right, just like I said.... academic gobbleddy gook.

My apologies. What follows is only a portion of what's in the talk.

   1. The founders must sell. They must listen to prospects.
   2. They cannot hire a VP of sales until they have learned how to sell the product.
   3. The founders should view their business as a guess.
   4. They can see if they are correct by selling, which will confirm:
      a. Who the customer is (who will pay for the product)
      b. How to talk about the product
      c. If product has the right features