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David Heinemeier Hansson-Unlearn Your MBA (Entire talk)

Entrepreneurship.org2 HN recommenders · 2017–2022
85K views · talk · evergreen · Uploaded 2013-08-28

David Heinemeier Hansson, creator of Ruby on Rails and partner at 37signals, argues that planning is guessing and startups should focus on today. He says constraints are an advantage and that startups can bootstrap profitably in sizable markets.

HN recommends it as the classic counterpoint to Silicon Valley growth-at-all-costs startup thinking.

Startups & entrepreneurshipManagement, leadership & organizations

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3 comments from Hacker News

@sarabande2017 · in “YC’s Essential Startup Advice”

I would check out the writings of 37Signals (now Basecamp)/RoR founder David Heinemeier Hansson, who advocates bootstrapping for not-necessarily small markets. His talk "How to unlearn your MBA" in particular was fantastic in providing a counterpoint to Silicon-valley style Startups: [VIDEO] . He directly comments on the YCombinator model at 53'57" ( [VIDEO] ), but the whole thing is worth watching.

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@AgloeDreams2020 · in “Do things that don't require scale”

Reminds me of this very controversial but incredible talk by @DHH of Basecamp/Hey: [VIDEO] Things that don't require scale require a VERY different line of business thinking, generally centered around profits vs growth.

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@redthrow2022 · in “Managers with MBAs are the best at taking money from workers and not much else [pdf]”

DHH (who also happens to be from Denmark) gave the classic "Unlearn Your MBA" talk in 2010: [VIDEO]

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