Re:Marc Andreessen: Not every startup should be a Lean Start...
by erichocean on Tuesday December 04, 2012 @02:13PM
(#4872686)
How can you project without past data?
Me personally? Or anyone?
Because it's pretty clear that people can and do project without any data. For example, Apple hadn't sold a single phone, and Steve Jobs went up on stage and said that Apple expected to sell 10 million iPhones.
Apple did ZERO market research. It was basic Jobs saying, "yeah, this'll sell" based on his own estimation. And it did.
I'm not Steve Jobs, but I also don't need historical data to project sales into the future, and be reasonably accurate when doing so.
What I do, and what I suspect Jobs did, is (a) see if the product/service resonates with me personally, and (b) most importantly, see if there is a narrative for the product/service that can be communicated to, and accepted by, large numbers of people. If I can't develop a narrative, I don't believe the product/service will succeed and I work on something else.
The ability to determine a narrative that'll work ahead of time is what makes the forward-looking approach work. If you can't do that with any kind of consistency, you should do Ries' approach, IMO.
I'm a writer/filmmaker at heart, and have spent many years getting good at story/narrative. So that's a really comfortable way to do things for myself and my company.
Me personally? Or anyone?
Because it's pretty clear that people can and do project without any data. For example, Apple hadn't sold a single phone, and Steve Jobs went up on stage and said that Apple expected to sell 10 million iPhones.
Apple did ZERO market research. It was basic Jobs saying, "yeah, this'll sell" based on his own estimation. And it did.
I'm not Steve Jobs, but I also don't need historical data to project sales into the future, and be reasonably accurate when doing so.
What I do, and what I suspect Jobs did, is (a) see if the product/service resonates with me personally, and (b) most importantly, see if there is a narrative for the product/service that can be communicated to, and accepted by, large numbers of people. If I can't develop a narrative, I don't believe the product/service will succeed and I work on something else.
The ability to determine a narrative that'll work ahead of time is what makes the forward-looking approach work. If you can't do that with any kind of consistency, you should do Ries' approach, IMO.
I'm a writer/filmmaker at heart, and have spent many years getting good at story/narrative. So that's a really comfortable way to do things for myself and my company.