" I'd just like to say that in writing the blog post, I had no such motives (consulting, that is) ".

I never said you did (just in case it wasn't clear :-)). It is obvious you honestly believe that there is a lot of valuable insight behind the "marketing bullshit" enveloping the "lean startup" buzz.

I don't agree (or at least I don't agree about the ratio of hype to substance, but that is all right, differences of opinion are good).

I do think (as I indicated above) that Steve Blank's books and blog posts are worth reading as are some of Eric Ries's early blog posts (before he got onto this "evangelism"/paid conferences kick). I am not claiming they are stupendously new insights but definitely worth reading and thinking about.

I think 700$ "lean startup conferences" (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1179623) are very like 700$ "I will teach you to be rich" scams. People who are really rich don't go around holding seminars on How to Be Rich and charging people money for those.

I believe you could get much more value from reading patio11 's posts here and on his blog, Paul Graham's essays and mixergy interview transcripts of startup founders than attending these vague conferences (unless you are into heavy duty echo chamber networking), thus avoiding paying good money to be initiated into "A New Era of Enterpreneurship that is dawning" [ from the marketing spiel at http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2010/03/new-conference-... ]

Is there something to the "lean startups" idea? Definitely. Is there a lot of borderline scammy hype right now (in other words a lot of "marketing bullshit") around those ideas? Definitely.

Not that Eric Ries et al need validation from me, but I nearly went to that conference. (The timing just did not work for me.) You think $700 is a lot of money? I was getting ready to buy a plane ticket across the Pacific. I thought it was likely to be cheap at the price, given the quality of the novel insights Eric Ries et al have been writing about.

Take Minimum Viable Product, for example. It is similar to 37Signals "do less", but it doesn't end there: you're eliminating parts of the product which don't provide value, but you're also strategically deferring parts which do provide value until you've got a handle on the big business risks. I think that is a pretty powerful idea. Hugely powerful.

I've talked on the Business of Software forums for literally years now on how important polishing the first five minutes of interaction with your product is, but it never occurred to me to get that five minutes out before building the rest of the product. The story about spending 6 months to make the IMVU IM client being wasted because no one downloaded it, and how you could have gotten the same information without actually coding the IM client simply by putting up a download button and having nobody click it, was a lightbulb moment for me. Hey, wait a second: instead of building the whole product and then optimizing the living daylights out of the first five minutes, I can build the first five minutes and see if that knocks socks off. If so, then invest in building the rest of the product. (If not, figure out why it isn't knocking socks off and recalibrate. I'm not sure I like "pivot.")

This was hugely influential in my choice of Appointment Reminder over a notebook full of other ideas for my next product. There are probably a few decent ideas in there (amidst a lot of drek and random scribblings), but Appointment Reminder was the one that had an obvious opportunity for a very compelling demo implementable in a few weeks. And I think it will work fairly decently for me.

Heck, I think I stole three ideas just from watching the videos.

"You think $700 is a lot of money?"

Sure it is, for the differential in the information you can get by paying it and attending the "New Age Of Entrepreneurship Dawning" seminar vs reading, talking to people who actually run startups today, reading HN and so on. Obviously there are people who think otherwise.

Doesn't change my views on the essential marginal value of Ries's offerings and "insights" vs Steve Blanks' originals. As to extracting lessons for startup experience, one can do that from any startup story without buying into the whole "lean startup" filter.

"Take Minimum Viable Product, for example. It is similar to 37Signals "do less", but it doesn't end there: you're eliminating parts of the product which don't provide value, but you're also strategically deferring parts which do provide value until you've got a handle on the big business risks. I think that is a pretty powerful idea. Hugely powerful."

Sure. Why do you need to pay 700$ to understand that idea? Sure you could pay. It is your money. I am just saying I wouldn't. And I don't believe in "I will tell you how to get rich" type seminars. If you have the money to spare Mr Ries has (had?) a $180,000 for 3 days of wisdom sharing deal too. (http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2009/08/introducing-lea...). On that thread I defended his right to price his wares any way he wanted to. I still do. I am just saying I don't think it is worth that kind of money, which is a different thing.

As I said, Caveat Emptor. Listen to opinions. Then do what you will with your money and time.

Your missives on the value of the conference would carry more weight had you actually attended it. The majority of the presentations were from people actually running startups -- exactly what you recommend.

Conferences like this will help bring structure to a concept that continues to be quite amorphous. Scammy consultants have a greater ability to flourish when there isn't someone or something guiding what the term means. You may quibble with the marginal value of Eric's insights, or disagree with his fees, but I would hope you'd agree that his is trying to bring people to together to consolidate these ideas and concepts in a wholly transparent way. Kudos for that.

For what it's worth, I have the same sense as you describe -- that there's something consultanty and vaguely scammy about the Lean Startup movement (like there is about most software "movements") -- and for the same reason as you, namely pattern recognition from having observed these things in the agile space. The main lesson I learned from the latter is that the people selling consulting about how to build working software were, with some exceptions, not particularly able to build working software or run successful software projects themselves. They were like music teachers who couldn't play the instrument; their skill was in talking convincingly (and expensively) about how the instrument should be played. Their customers would frequently get very enthusiastic and shiny-eyed about what they'd heard, but it never seemed to lead in the end to better music being produced - only more talk about it. (Edit: and lots of ideological you're-doing-it-wrong thinking.)

I have seen no good answer as to what the leaders of this movement have actually done to justify authoritative stature on the subject of startups. (Steve Blank is an exception, but he also doesn't seem that directly involved.) The combination of that and the veneer of consultanty slickness is a real red flag.

I'm all in favor of people in the startup world trading great ideas and war stories. But the whole consulting thing, with its jargon and processes, its conferences, speaking engagements, and most of all its high fees... I think that model is broken and we'd be better off without it.

We're talking about the same conference that was broadcast live for free on justin.tv right?