Startup Poker

Poker is a lot like starting companies but I don't like the metaphor you use at all. The similarity is very simple. Both are extreme variance games. When you play a high variance game and lose, it's difficult to tell if you played poorly or got unlucky. Playing perfectly (GTO) in poker requires that sometimes you get stacked. Most people have trouble with this concept. The idea that they can do everything right and still not get a great outcome is scary.

Another valuable concept in poker is stack size. In poker, you should never play a hand in a game where you don't feel comfortable losing your entire stack. Similarly for running a company, you should try to make many small bets (or experiments) when the outcome is high variance. You shouldn't risk your company with every decision. Learning how to take lots of little risks well can even out the variance without ever putting you at significant risk.

There's a lot to take away from poker when starting a company. I don't think your article covered the important bits.

Fundamentally disagree with the premise. Poker is a zero sum game. Startups are not.

This doesn't read like it was written by somebody with a firm understanding of poker game theory.

There are ways to compare startups to poker. This doesn't seem like one of them.

I can see how a poker fan might be annoyed that this didn't match what they thought was important about poker, but TFA still has value for illustrative purposes. The author admits he's stretching the poker analogy, then proposes rules for a poker variant with incomplete/imperfect information and information asymmetry that's somewhat similar to startups. Including avoiding bad bets by folding and pivoting by trading cards. Overall I thought it was clever.

It's not a perfect metaphor but it's an easy-to-grasp mental model for explaining certain Lean Startup concepts. Coincidentally, I am currently developing an online poker game (literally! that was the main reason I clicked on this link). Today in a conference call with my project partner, we were talking about what hypothesis-driven goals we had for pre-launch testing, and I was glad I saw the article because it was like an abstract mini-refresher.

Interesting exercise, but I think that poker is more about playing the people at the table than the cards in your hands. Not sure the analogy presented here speaks to me that much.