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The entire point of a minimum viable product is not that you have a complete, flawless app, but rather that you get something up you can iterate on quickly."
Given that I agree with this premise, it's interesting that I come the exact opposite conclusion. If 99.9% of the work is in the iteration after the MVP, then when someone says "I could build that in a weekend" it's totally fair to say "'That' is only 0.01% of the work". Hard work that it may be to put out an application, none of that matters when no one uses it. Conversely, easy work that it may be to come up with an idea that has already been done before, if it's successfully marketed and developed into a product with traction and then ends up being the first of its ilk to be the runaway success, then you end up with Google instead of Lycos or Yahoo.
I think his point is that reducing successful companies and products to implementation is to miss the forest for the trees. Traction is hard. Execution is everything. If it was easy, everyone would be able to do it successfully.
Given that I agree with this premise, it's interesting that I come the exact opposite conclusion. If 99.9% of the work is in the iteration after the MVP, then when someone says "I could build that in a weekend" it's totally fair to say "'That' is only 0.01% of the work". Hard work that it may be to put out an application, none of that matters when no one uses it. Conversely, easy work that it may be to come up with an idea that has already been done before, if it's successfully marketed and developed into a product with traction and then ends up being the first of its ilk to be the runaway success, then you end up with Google instead of Lycos or Yahoo.
I think his point is that reducing successful companies and products to implementation is to miss the forest for the trees. Traction is hard. Execution is everything. If it was easy, everyone would be able to do it successfully.