kevindewalt

Agree 100%.

And we like the "boring" things. But I don't see why doing univariate analysis doesn't deliver on the promise of the post. Contrasted with guessing, that is.

I'm the author of this post - please let me know if you have any questions.

Have had a lot of positive feedback so far from everyone who bought Traction. These guys are addressing the #1 white hot point of pain startups are facing today.

We (Patrick and I) spent a lot of time talking about this afterward. Really fascinating to think about the help companies will need in solving these problems.

I hope everyone enjoys listening to this discussion as much I enjoyed having it with Eric. We went deep on a lot of issues, particularly refreshing given the media hype around lean startup right now.

We even talked about the type of dialog that happens about lean startup on Hacker News. ;-)

I don't go into this point on the post, but in my experience software entrepreneurs are among the people best equipped to be Lean Startup entrepreneurs. And it isn't because we can build things.

It takes a unique combination of skepticism and an interest in problem solving and discovery to be a lean startup entrepreneur.

Once I realized that entrepreneurship was really just problem solving and discovery I was able to relate it to my engineering mindset.

Guys,

This is really clever. When I first looked at it I thought "I can already do this in my app or with Unbounce or ..."

But then when I took a closer look at app it occurred to me that this is sooooo simple. Unbounce takes a learning curve and doing app-level routing testing can take some configuration.

With that in mind, I see a couple of options:

1. Do A/B testing on the type of products you suggest, such as Google Docs that don't normally then themselves to such functionality. The issue I have with this approach is that I don't actually know of a situation where I would have done this. The times I'm A/B testing something (which isn't often), I'm highly invested in whatever I'm doing and the outcome. This is almost always whatever I'm building or selling, hence Unbounce or my own app.

2. Figure out a way to put var.to INTO an app or a situation that I care a lot about and would pay for the tool. IF you could figure out way to make it drop-dead simple for me to put it into my app and then provided killer analytics an services on top if it, then it might be something I'd pay for.

Bottom line: I think you have a clever, interesting, easy-to-use tool that I like from an intellectually curious position. But it doesn't yet grip me emotionally with a "I've GOT to use this" position yet.

Nice job, hope it helps!

Kevin

Jason,

Well-written article, but your thought process follows classic survivorship bias.

You've extrapolated practices at two of the most successful companies ever created in the history of capitalism and concluded that "because it seems to work for them it will work for everyone."

Of course you may well be right, but to conclude that you need to look at other companies that have followed the same "developer driven" approach. How many have failed? Succeeded?

Interviewing two people who won the lottery by playing every day but Tuesday for 5 years doesn't mean I'll win by doing the same.

Again - you might be right - but I can't come to that conclusion based on the logic described.

For my thoughts on this topic: http://bit.ly/eKQIKu

I looked at this space a few years ago. It falls under the heading of "competitive intelligence" in most companies. Ultimately I decided not to pursue it, basically because I saw what rivalmap was doing and realized the opportunity wasn't as big as I thought it would be for a similar idea. (Not knocking them, they seem to be very sharp guys who are executing well and very focused on learning their market)

Most likely to make any real money at this you're going to have to market to non start-ups.

The most knowledgeable person on this topic is August Jackson, @8of12 on Twitter. He runs the competitive intelligence podcast. Plus he's a great guy.

Kevin Dewalt Feel free to email me at kevindewalt !(--[[AT]]--(&* kevindewalt dot com