Startups Do Not Prepare You to Create Products

Fact: prefacing your opinions with the word "Fact" does not make them actual facts. An example:

> Fact: the moon is made of blue cheese

My opinion - articles that try to generalise from a certain kind of start-up to all start-ups don't really stand up

I gather the author works for an agency. I wonder if this has colored their perception of startups. Maybe startups that hire agencies for various things are more likely to match the author's rather bleak description. A company that actually is passionately focused on making users happy might be more likely to keep everything in-house.

By all means, lots of great, passionate startups hire agencies to help with all kinds of things. I just wouldn't be surprised if a whole lot of get-rich-quick dreamers did too.

Does this article actually have a specific message? I read the whole thing and it sounds something like "businesses will exploit you." (True, but duh.) Or maybe "startups are trying to be acquired." (Sometimes true, sometimes false.)

I'm not even sure she has a specific meaning for the word "startup," or that her usage means the same thing that most other people mean by that term.

Most people want most things as a means to an end, so it's hard for me to see how using product sales/adoption as a driver toward being an attractive acquisition is unusual, surprising or crazy; but either way, not every startup wants to be acquired, and not every startup is trying to drive toward that end. One of the many "facts" in the article that are not facts.

These "facts" do not apply to startups that actually succeed. Understanding customer demands and tracking business intelligence related to customer behaviors are two incredibly useful strategies for developing great products. I've seen startups do it all the time.

I worked with the startup Streamable.com for a short time, and Armen, the CEO, once told me something really insightful. He said to me, "There are no 'product' people - successful web products are designed by listening to your users and designing appropriately." As the CEO, he was the one listening to users and communicating with them. I thought this was a novel approach, and given how great Streamable is, I think Armen was on to something.

If you're going to sell me a self-help guide, I want tangible benefits. Tell me if it's about losing weight, managing my time, or how to my shoes.

Don't just call me a fat lazy slob as I'm tripping down the stairs.

There's a kernel of truth in that a lot of start-ups are pretty bad at product development or working in a sustainable way that produces quality results, because the founders are focused on something else -- the "vision", the business model, or even hiring.

If you add up all the generalizations in the article, though (e.g. looking good for a future acquirer above all else) we're talking about a small fraction of start-ups, not start-ups as a category.

Large amounts of sense. I don't totally agree, but I think you end up working on a snapshot of a product in a start-up: when we talk about stories, what we're doing is envisaging a best-of-possible-worlds view of a future product.