Turn Every Weakness Into a Strength

When building products, we’re constantly aware of how imperfect the things we build are. When telling users about your product, that’s not a very good thing to lead with. Instead, turn weaknesses into strengths.

For example, in the early years of Stripe, large enterprises looked at the offering and felt that it wasn’t “enterprise-ready”. Rather than shy away from this area of weakness, they embraced it with the mantra ‘Stripe is for Startups’. When speaking with enterprises, they didn’t bother trying to convince them that Stripe was enterprise-ready, instead they said “don’t you want to work more like a startup?” They turned a weakness into a strength until they eventually closed the gaps.

This is very powerful lesson in product and marketing. If you can fix it, then fix it quickly. If you can’t (or no time soon) embrace it and turn it into a strength.