I like the identification of the different things you get from a bridge (learning and transport), but I believe success for a startup (or for any endeavor) comes from _NOT_ separating the goals. You must find a way to excel at both goals, and the goals you haven’t stated (like showing potential partners and customers that you’re worth investing in (this goal probably overrides all others for some phases of your life/project).
Building each bridge must be done in a way that you learn details along the way, and modify your plan accordingly. And apply that learning to the next bridge, when you can make bigger changes. Outrageous ideas (high-risk, high-reward) can be simulated or tried in small/unimportant ways, generally funded by success of prior projects. Which means you have to have successful projects before you can take risks.
This recursive strategy (do some small/safe good, use the rewards to fund bigger/harder/riskier good, use those rewards for still bigger things, etc.) applies at almost every level, from individual to company to industry to civilization.
Your approach is probably appropriate for a software startup, but it’s horrible for a bridge. If your first bridge collapses and kills a bunch of people, your company won’t survive to build bridge 2. Some industries tolerate failure better than others, and a company needs to set its risk tolerances accordingly.
Wait. I’m advocating _NOT_ experimenting very much with your first bridge—build a fairly standard one first. You will learn a lot in doing so, and end up with a bridge that works. My point is that you have to both produce and learn at the same time, not do one then the other.
The intended meaning of the post is that there can be “producing in order to produce” and “producing in order to learn”. The producing to learn might involve very real producing, but underlying goal is different. You might be trying to get real investment from real investors, but the goal could be a) receiving money, b) testing your assumptions about whether you can raise successfully.
In practice, I think you’re right that sometimes (or often) both intentions are necessary. You need to get users both to learn and to survive. Still, the two intentions trade off against each other and it’s possible to forget about one or the other. My primary recommendation is to be aware and deliberate about your intentions so that you have the right ones at the right time in the right amount.
I like the identification of the different things you get from a bridge (learning and transport), but I believe success for a startup (or for any endeavor) comes from _NOT_ separating the goals. You must find a way to excel at both goals, and the goals you haven’t stated (like showing potential partners and customers that you’re worth investing in (this goal probably overrides all others for some phases of your life/project).
Building each bridge must be done in a way that you learn details along the way, and modify your plan accordingly. And apply that learning to the next bridge, when you can make bigger changes. Outrageous ideas (high-risk, high-reward) can be simulated or tried in small/unimportant ways, generally funded by success of prior projects. Which means you have to have successful projects before you can take risks.
This recursive strategy (do some small/safe good, use the rewards to fund bigger/harder/riskier good, use those rewards for still bigger things, etc.) applies at almost every level, from individual to company to industry to civilization.
Your approach is probably appropriate for a software startup, but it’s horrible for a bridge. If your first bridge collapses and kills a bunch of people, your company won’t survive to build bridge 2. Some industries tolerate failure better than others, and a company needs to set its risk tolerances accordingly.
Wait. I’m advocating _NOT_ experimenting very much with your first bridge—build a fairly standard one first. You will learn a lot in doing so, and end up with a bridge that works. My point is that you have to both produce and learn at the same time, not do one then the other.
The intended meaning of the post is that there can be “producing in order to produce” and “producing in order to learn”. The producing to learn might involve very real producing, but underlying goal is different. You might be trying to get real investment from real investors, but the goal could be a) receiving money, b) testing your assumptions about whether you can raise successfully.
In practice, I think you’re right that sometimes (or often) both intentions are necessary. You need to get users both to learn and to survive. Still, the two intentions trade off against each other and it’s possible to forget about one or the other. My primary recommendation is to be aware and deliberate about your intentions so that you have the right ones at the right time in the right amount.