Unlikely Recommendations for Startups and Entrepreneurs | Hacker News Reader

Unlikely Recommendations for Startups and Entrepreneurs

moz.com

63 pointsjonnym1ller23 comments

Very interesting article!

His point about MVPs is particularly interesting, IMO - but I'm not entirely sure it's correct.

The point of an MVP is to identify an excellent product/market fit. One of the ways you can tell if you've got one of those is if your crappy, half-finished product still attracts users.

If you're refusing to test at MVP stage, you're in serious danger of applying lipstick to a pig.

Of course, it's worth noting that Rand's company has the money to commit to testing multiple "EVPs" - but for bootstrappers, out of all the advice in this article, I'm not convinced by that point.

(The "build an audience first" advice, by contrast, is proven to work pretty well. Brian Clark at Copyblogger has referred to it as "MVA" - Minimum Viable Audience - strategy.)

I think his tips are sort of a chain. So if you've done #1 then #2 about EVP works. Since you already have a marketing channel built an exceptional product will be able to grab hold and take off right away.

This could have been written by my ex-boss, who hired me as a 'lean consultant', then proceeded to ignore everything I said, and do this instead. We're about to find out which of us was right; I suspect she was.

But getting to an 'Exceptional Viable Product' was tough. Constantly moving release deadlines. No idea who was 'right' in the team when it came to UX. No idea if a feature was valuable or necessary so 'done' was a constantly moving target. We ended up with a beautiful, if not bulky EVP (homerlearning.com).

Well, the initialism "EVP" says it all: "exceptional" is not measurable, so it's going to come down to the most powerful person asserting their sense of when the VP becomes E.

The problem with MVPs is that no one clearly know what they are and the folks that came up with it or evangelize it are often full of shit. On one end, lean is pitched being similar to the scientific method. But on the same note, when someone raises the objection about how to get statistically significant data, we are instructed to use our judgement. Well, that is not the scientific method then!

Next, let's move on to the case studies related to lean. Most people who credit lean rarely treat their project as a carefully designed scientific experiment. They do the common things like dry testing for demand, making quick landing pages, talking to their market...a lot. And yet, if you went to the lean folks and said if these things equate to being lean, they would say NO, lean is a lot more.

So what is lean? No one really knows. It's just that when it works out, people are quick to give it credit. But no one wants to see the graveyard of start-ups that give up their ideas everyday because according to their understanding of the lean method, they did not achieve product/market fit. You know this is bullshit because you can take a cursory look at the same product/market they gave up on and see multiple start-ups doing well.

I say all this as a former cheerleader for lean that is mostly disappointed with how poorly it is being taught and clarified.

...I think that article about "1 Weird Tip" has perpetually ruined me.

And he works for a SEO company! This is a sales pitch to use his tools.

Unfortunately, the above tips will not work if you are bootstrapped too.

So if he didn't own an SEO company, would this post have been acceptable? Or would you still have accused him of writing a thinly veiled product pitch?

And yes, this stuff would work for a bootstrapped startup. I have a bootstrapped startup (a competitor to Moz actually) and I can vouch for the points he's making.

>I have a bootstrapped startup (a competitor to Moz actually)

Oooh, metric-y tools?

Might I ask for a link?

So if he didn't own an SEO company, would this post have been acceptable?

I think the point is that if he wasn't an SEO maximizer, it would be worded and/or titled differently, perhaps more outwardly usefully. In other words, why does the number of tips or the likelihood that the reader is aware of them matter in a headline? Linkbait, there is no other explanation.

It's linkbait. Try looking at Buzzfeed or Mashable without cringing.

I can rich and you can too!

It's a blog post by an SEO company. Did you think it wouldn't use a link bait title only vaguely related to the article's content ?

The article actually has good points and content, don't jump on the "SEO is bad" bandwagon unless you can prove that the content is actually bad.

Statistically, "number of things" articles have historically been bad content. Good writers don't structure their points as lists, bad ones do because they can't write well and so they can't segue from one to another effectively.

I know you're speaking in broad generalizations, but you should read some of Rand's stuff before passing judgment on him. He's written some amazing stuff on Moz - http://moz.com/community/users/63#posts

Full disclosure: I'm a Moz associate and a personal friend of Rand's.

you should read some of Rand's stuff before passing judgment on him

Just an observation that this is pretty much a hi-touch version of clickbait. I'm sure your friend is a nice and intelligent guy, though.

I think there's a reason you don't see Harper's titling their Annotations like, "17 reasons CAN-SPAM is fatally flawed," but US Magazine does. I use these examples of meatspace magazines to counter any possible, "but it's the internet, that's the way people write there! dealwithit.jpg" No, it's just another instance of the same old thing discovered decades ago by Cosmopolitan and the National Enquirer.

I'm totally open to evidence to the contrary! What is some of the best writing you've ever seen that is structured as a list? If it exists, I haven't seen it.

> What is some of the best writing you've ever seen that is structured as a list?

http://www.weitz.de/cl-ppcre/

Damn, I thought it was a Mozilla article for a second and clicked. I quickly realized my mistake - it's a former SEOmoz tricksters in different clothing :)

- create linkbait articles with arbitrary number of items mentioned in the title

- throw in alternative version of "1 weird tip" wording for good measure

Definitely don't agree on his point about MVPs. I waited too long and built an "EVP" and found out I had no customers.

Beautiful product, no business.

There is a lot of time spent in between "quite small" and "decent" on that graph.

Moz have a weird view of how to obtain success, because due to their fame they're guaranteed to succeed every time they put up a post. Take any practical tips they give with a hefty helping of salt.

They are very good at the theory, it's just they don't live on the same planet as everyone else.

Can anybody share experience on "Marketing First"?

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