One of the keys to building great products is to regularly make contact with reality. Ideas rarely survive first contact with users—what we think is good might be completely useless to an actual potential customer. Regular contact with reality insulates you from the illusion of explanatory depth.
Founders tend to get so far ahead of themselves in company building that a popular piece of advice from Paul Graham is to build an initial product a small group of users love.
Product people get this wrong too. It’s easy to think we understand something we don’t and roadmaps/timelines don’t bake in time to be wrong.
See also:
- Good product engineers don’t outsource their thinking and talk to users directly
- Still conjecture is vital to product development and so is having good taste
- Have the willingness to pay conversation early
Links to this note
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Business Strategy Is an Explanation of How to Win
Business strategy should concisely answer who the most import customers are, how to attract them, and what the entire company must work towards to win that market.
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The Mistakes We Make the Second Time (Literature Notes)
I read The mistakes we make the second time by Harry Glaser. It points out that certain things are easier than they should be (raising money, hiring) and that friction is helpful. It’s easy to build in anticipation of scale you don’t have because you weren’t spending enough time getting to product market fit. It also talks about how the excitement and joy don’t the same thing they did the first time (e.g. seed round doesn’t feel like an accomplishment).