Consider your last question with your first point. IF Lean Startup works (or is applied properly) then we can’t have as many failures. Just speaking from experience (running incubators for decades, I’ve seen more pitches than a VC), there are both very dumb ideas and exceptional startups. Lean should eliminate the former and ensure greater likelihood of the later. We’d see as many bad ideas, and we certainly wouldn’t have as high a rate of good ideas failing.

Make sure you note the article, I actually didn’t say it’s good for nothing; I’m actually very supportive of it - I’m pointing out that founders don’t practice it despite saying so, that most mentors are awful, and most investors are worse.

And that is the answer to your question (or, my point). Founders use “lean startup” as permission or forgiveness to just build an MVP as though it’s telling us that you build an MVP to validate customers and find product-market fit. That’s not only wrong, it’s ignorant and, frankly, just idiotic.

That, we can validate and idea, find and convert customers, and even prove the ability to grow, without the thing. The point of marketing (and talking to customers) is to only build WHEN you have determined that it’s worthwhile… an MVP exists to further prove that you scale and compete. Lean isn’t permission to build an MVP because you’re ignorant and think you’ve been told to do it to prove you can (to investors), but that’s what founders do.