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Ask HN: What is the term for faking automation by using human labor?

8 points by hotpockets ↗ HN
Like early in a startup you fake automation by really using human power. Its supposed to look automated but there is a human behind the scenes doing it. I swear there is a term for this that I can't think of. Best I can think of is meatgearing.

17 comments

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stray
Work?
hotpockets
Ha! I tried editing my text to be clearer what I'm referring to.
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jonny_storm
Mechanical Turk: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_Turk
hotpockets
I mean like, you have a 3 person startup and one of you is running around doing work that your customers assume must be already automated.
detaro
"doing thinks that don't scale"?
unimpressive
Yes, doing things that don't scale or mechanical turking. I couldn't imagine what else you mean.
jonny_storm
Lean Startup had some great stories about beating the pavement and providing services by hand. Perhaps there's some corresponding jargon to be had in there.
boulos
In addition to mechanical turk, there's also the phrase "Fake it till you make it" which is somewhat appropriate (the connotation is more like "pretend to be a success").
brotchie
Pretty sure one term for it is "concierge MVP" where you make it look like a legit automated service, but in-fact behind the scenes it's all human labour.
kek918
I think a lot of small companies does this in the beginning if the task is hard to implement and you have other critical tasks to finish first. I never knew it had a term, fun to know "Mechanical Turk"

"Manual automation" could be another term :)

147
I'm very certain the phrase you're looking for is "wizard of oz". That's what Eric Ries called these types of MVPs in The Lean Startup.