A collection of a few statements (maybe platitudes) that help me frame how I think about business, tech and product, gathered over the course of the last 5 years.
On product
- building bad products, by your own definition, will end in failure
- you need to build something that you can self define as good
- don't take for granted how much your experience (life experience, work experience, etc) impacts your understanding of why something is good
- feedback is good, but often too late - early on, your "validation" should've helped craft the product. early feedback should be intimate and through pre-existing relationships
On users
- you will, inevitably, get "haters"
- people will "sign on" and just dislike what you're offering, thats okay
- you can't get to everyone, define who you want to reach early
On building
- less is always more
- manage product surface area to extract better understanding
- don't be afraid to ask for money early, you don't need a headliner before charging the price of admission
On sales
- narratives work better than features
- "save X, do more Y, be able to do Z" is better than "we have A, B, C", especially if the haves are technical
On focus
- 4 hr focus > 1 unfocused hour every day
- you can't do everything that lands in your inbox or in your head, you have to choose
- ROI of building (writing code etc) starts lower than you'd expect, ROI of just talking about your thing starts much higher than you'd like
On hype
- good to chase when you have a base, bad to chase when starting from 0
- good product + good narrative > hype
On operations
- being a good operator is much more nuanced than being a good builder
- be ready (and excited) to solve problems that don't require you to write any code
- become comfortable with inconsistently dealing with users early on, you can't "standardise" when you have 1-3 customers.