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We Have Learned Nothing

https://colossus.com/article/we-have-learned-nothing-startup-pundits/
25•lukestevens•3h ago

Comments

neom•1h ago
Methods improved the baseline, but also increased competition, keeping outcomes flat. Totally underweights systems and then blasts into methods not working. “Just do something different” is not a strategy... In fact, many great businesses look conventional early, and only later reveal their advantage.

I don't think this article is very good, at all.

temp8830•1h ago
The Lean Startup methodology is likely applicable only within a very narrow niche: a newly discovered green field with plenty of low-hanging fruit. Web apps in the late 90s and 2000s. Mobile apps after that. Agent integrations now. These are areas where the barrier to entry is low, problems are plenty, and there's space for a thousand flowers to bloom.

In contrast, for a company that can't be started by a single app developer - getting out of the building won't help. Nobody in the space worth talking to will talk to you, for starters.

lumost•26m ago
It also forces you to focus on some extremely narrow problem definition. Often, these narrow problem definitions turn out to be features of existing platforms or in the ai age - artifacts of the current model generation.
antonvs•20m ago
> Nobody in the space worth talking to will talk to you, for starters.

There’s a skill issue there. I know a founder who’s able to get people to talk to him. As a result, his startup had F500 customers almost from the beginning.

But that’s the kind of thing that no amount of documented strategy and tactics is ever doing to be able to teach. I’ve watched it happening, but I can’t do it.

hresvelgr•45m ago
Startup punditry is a business niche being capitalised on and it's being regarded in this article like a commune of knowledge. It's mildly insightful entertainment literature, with customers. On a philosophical level it's absolute value is tainted by its existence in the market. Most things are, but it living in the context of entrepreneurial endeavours, it taints it substantially more than most.
baxtr•28m ago
> The New Pundits have been around long enough, and are widely known enough, that their relevant books have collectively sold millions of copies and are taught in virtually all university entrepreneurship courses.[4] If they worked, it would show up in the statistics. Instead, there has been zero systematic progress over the past 30 years in making startups more likely to survive.

For me, this is where it breaks. There are two assumptions that the author must be challenged on.

1. Enough people know about these methods

2. Of those people enough use the methods properly

Judging from my own experience I can’t confirm neither of these. Even those people that know the approach rarely have the rigor to treat startups as a series of experiments. Ego plays a large part.

A sufficiently detailed spec is code

https://haskellforall.com/2026/03/a-sufficiently-detailed-spec-is-code
156•signa11•4h ago•57 comments

Cook: A simple CLI for orchestrating Claude Code

https://rjcorwin.github.io/cook/
119•staticvar•4h ago•27 comments

What 81,000 people want from AI

https://www.anthropic.com/features/81k-interviews
40•dsr12•1h ago•30 comments

Nvidia greenboost: transparently extend GPU VRAM using system RAM/NVMe

https://gitlab.com/IsolatedOctopi/nvidia_greenboost
242•mmastrac•3d ago•47 comments

Austin’s surge of new housing construction drove down rents

https://www.pew.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/2026/03/18/austins-surge-of-new-housing-con...
460•matthest•6h ago•499 comments

Warranty Void If Regenerated

https://nearzero.software/p/warranty-void-if-regenerated
267•Stwerner•9h ago•156 comments

OpenRocket

https://openrocket.info/
483•zeristor•3d ago•89 comments

Autoresearch for SAT Solvers

https://github.com/iliazintchenko/agent-sat
88•chaisan•5h ago•15 comments

Rob Pike’s Rules of Programming (1989)

https://www.cs.unc.edu/~stotts/COMP590-059-f24/robsrules.html
903•vismit2000•20h ago•425 comments

We Have Learned Nothing

https://colossus.com/article/we-have-learned-nothing-startup-pundits/
25•lukestevens•3h ago•6 comments

Conway's Game of Life, in real life

https://lcamtuf.substack.com/p/conways-game-of-life-in-real-life
22•surprisetalk•2h ago•2 comments

LotusNotes

https://computer.rip/2026-03-14-lotusnotes.html
37•TMWNN•3d ago•14 comments

RX – a new random-access JSON alternative

https://github.com/creationix/rx
54•creationix•6h ago•19 comments

Wander – A tiny, decentralised tool to explore the small web

https://susam.net/wander/
245•susam•22h ago•65 comments

Nvidia NemoClaw

https://github.com/NVIDIA/NemoClaw
282•hmokiguess•14h ago•203 comments

Czech Man's Stone in Barn's Foundations Is Rare Bronze Age Spearhead Mold

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/a-czech-man-used-this-stone-in-his-barns-foundations-it...
32•bookofjoe•2d ago•4 comments

Mozilla to launch free built-in VPN in upcoming Firefox 149

https://cyberinsider.com/mozilla-to-launch-free-built-in-vpn-in-upcoming-firefox-149/
57•adrianwaj•2h ago•28 comments

Show HN: Will my flight have Starlink?

212•bblcla•12h ago•274 comments

Show HN: I built 48 lightweight SVG backgrounds you can copy/paste

https://www.svgbackgrounds.com/set/free-svg-backgrounds-and-patterns/
224•visiwig•14h ago•49 comments

An x86-64 back end for raven-uxn

https://www.mattkeeter.com/blog/2026-03-15-uxn/
24•dcre•3d ago•5 comments

Framework doesn't matter

https://cemrehancavdar.com/2026/02/19/your-framework-may-not-matter/
7•zdw•4d ago•0 comments

Book: The Emerging Science of Machine Learning Benchmarks

https://mlbenchmarks.org/00-preface.html
107•jxmorris12•4d ago•6 comments

Show HN: Browser grand strategy game for hundreds of players on huge maps

https://borderhold.io/play
13•sgolem•2d ago•10 comments

CVE-2026-3888: Important Snap Flaw Enables Local Privilege Escalation to Root

https://blog.qualys.com/vulnerabilities-threat-research/2026/03/17/cve-2026-3888-important-snap-f...
119•askl•14h ago•68 comments

What’s on HTTP?

https://whatsonhttp.com/
50•elixx•8h ago•24 comments

OpenAI Has New Focus (on the IPO)

https://om.co/2026/03/17/openai-has-new-focus-on-the-ipo/
202•aamederen•19h ago•171 comments

On a Boat

https://moq.dev/blog/on-a-boat/
145•mmcclure•5d ago•24 comments

Show HN: Playing LongTurn FreeCiv with Friends

https://github.com/ndroo/freeciv.andrewmcgrath.info
69•verelo•11h ago•29 comments

David Altrath Photography Diary

https://davidaltrath.com/diary/
6•mooreds•2d ago•1 comments

Machine Payments Protocol (MPP)

https://stripe.com/blog/machine-payments-protocol
166•bpierre•15h ago•71 comments