The right to build something new needs to be earned from existing customers. If they’re not happy with your core offering (most businesses start with a single product) they will worry that existing issues will make their way into the new product category. If people love your product they will naturally pull the company into other categories to solve more of their problems.
From Brian Chesky, founder of AirBnb.
See also:
- Being obsessed with what you are building is a competitive advantage
- The most effective people care a lot
- How to be a good product engineer
Links to this note
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A products is not just collection of features, but a promise to solve a problem or enhance the customer’s life in some material way. Faithfully delivering on a promise makes for a great product. Failing to deliver on a promise makes for a flimsy product.
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A Little Bit Broken Is Still Broken
Engineers and product people tend to think about issues as frequency distributions. How many users does this impact? How severe is it? But this misses one inescapable truth from a user’s perspective: a little bit broken is still broken.