Suppose that you make something that you're convinced is the best product in the world. You work for years, you spend millions. And then you launch. It turns out that nobody cares; you go bankrupt. Someone might ask: "Was it really a great product?" We could argue the answer to that, but I think it's the wrong question.
Businesses need to be sustainable. Some ideas work, some don't. I think the best thing we can do is to a) maximize our chances of success, and b) minimize the cost of our failures. I believe the only way to do that is to continuously and aggressively test our hypotheses. Otherwise, investment just ends up being the way we fool ourselves a little longer.
Products aren't art. They're commerce. If you want to do art, just do art.
Sure, validation is not a silver bullet. However, lots of startups make it or break due to luck and no-one(yet) can't eliminate randomness in a stochastic(debatable) system like technology entrepreneurship ecosystem. Validation helps to decrease the chance of failing, though. The famous quote by George Box reads "Remember that all models are wrong; the practical question is how wrong do they have to be to not be useful."
Also validation is not listening to what people tell, it's also observing actions of users when they interact with the MVP.
Yeah, I think he's misinterpreting what his photographer friend means. There are TONS of rules for good photographs, everything from technical ("sufficient lighting") all the way up to art theory ("rule of thirds"). The guy's point was probably that any subject, at any time, can possibly be photographed in a way the conforms to the requirements of an artistically pleasing image. Trying to fit that notion to the idea that entrepreneurs should just leap for the stars without checking to see if their figurative lens cap is off is not really very sound.
I tend to agree with you to some extent, even about the quote for the comment. But, startups as an example fails to me, because as we all know, most of the startups fail anyway.
p.s. there are rules for good photographs but following the rules can only put you on bar with other people. Learns the rules so that you can break them. Learn to validate so that you know when NOT to validate.
With that in mind, one should break the rules only if they have a high degree of confidence in their ability to discover a model that is better than standard model or understanding that the entire modelling approach is tainted. However, Dunning-Kruger effect hypothesis states that less competent are irrationally sure of themselves and vice versa. Are we in a situation where most actors on the market are trying to break the rules to their own detriment?
There are also lots and lots (and more lots) of bad photographs. There might not be specific rules for taking really stand-out pictures, but there sure are good rules for what not to do.
Some people instinctively understand them. Some people have spent years painstakingly learning them, and now choose to break them from time to time.
But there are plenty of rules, and if you're not already a genius or an expert, learning and following those rules is a reliable way to improve your photography.
Building a product is an art. There way too many things one should consider based on his experience and intelligence, not everything can be quantified and calculated (well, it can be, but still with assumptions, and once you assume...). As one of my favorite photographers says, "There are no rules for good photographs, there are just good photographs". Same can be said when building a product..