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David Heinemeier Hansson-Unlearn Your MBA (Entire talk)

Entrepreneurship.org

18K subscribers • 1 video on Hallway

YouTube
  • Recommended by 2 people: 2 on Hacker News.
  • A classic. People kept recommending it from 2017 to 2020.
  • Presented by David Heinemeier Hansson, creator of Ruby on Rails
  • An opinion. It argues one side of a question engineers disagree on.

Beginner. No background in the topic needed.

85K views13 years ago2 recommendations

Careers and interviewsTools and practiceStartupsInside tech companiesDeveloper productivity

David Heinemeier Hansson argues that planning is guessing and explains why startups should focus on profitability and constraints rather than scale.

David Heineimeier Hansson, the creator of Ruby on Rails and partner at 37signals in Chicago, says that planning is guessing, and for a start-up, the focus must be on today and not on tomorrow. He argues that constraints--fiscal, temporal, or o

Why it's here

2 people recommend this

What people say. Recommended as a classic talk on the bootstrapped startup philosophy and an alternative to the venture capital model.

sarabandeon Hacker News • Recommends

On “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: link to this video . He directly comments on the YCombinator model at 53'57" ( link to this video ), but the whole thing is worth watching.
View on Hacker News

AgloeDreamson Hacker News • Recommends

On “Do things that don't require scale”

Reminds me of this very controversial but incredible talk by @DHH of Basecamp/Hey: link to this video Things that don't require scale require a VERY different line of business thinking, generally centered around profits vs growth.
View on Hacker News

redthrowon Hacker News • Mentions

On “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: link to this video
View on Hacker News