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Seems like decent enough advice, but I can't help feel that there are going to be plenty of examples of when this fails. Anyone got any?


boo.com.

(Edit: for those too young to remember: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boo.com)


If you can find it, there's an excellent book on the Boo story; boo hoo http://www.amazon.co.uk/Boo-Hoo-Dot-Com-Story/dp/0099418371


I don't remember exactly how Boo.com went up and down, but wasn't the site extremely delayed? Atwood seems to talk about release early, release often (go fast, turn) and Boo.com, in my memory, did just the opposite.


That depends on what you mean by "delayed". :)

They built the site in an incredibly short time span but they got started too late and it had way too many features to cram in to such a short development time of course leading to plenty of bugs at release time.

The entire company didn't exist for much longer than a year so they almost didn't even have time to be delayed before they were gone. :)

From Wikipedia: "Boo.com's Swedish founders famously spent their way through £125 million ($188 million) in just six months."

Aaah, 1999. Those were the days. :)


It's vacuous, obvious advice. That Atwood tops HN with such tripe has always been a mystery to me.

Counter examples will be rare because Atwood's entry essentially says "evolve", decorating the post with some ignorance about smartphones, a naive simplification of version numbering, and so on.

Who would argue with "evolve" (insert the obvious joke). His other insight was "adapt", and again...what?




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