Week 38: Outsmarting customers

This is one of the most things I hate: Outsmarting customers.

In pre product-market-fit (pre-PMF), it’s always good to ship something in 2 weeks, test with real users and let them tell you what’s wrong/right than waiting for a full cycle of 1-2 month of conducting research, designing and iterating 5 different versions, and shipping 1 at the end.

Nothing beats a user experience delivered in a user hand on a real device with a prod app. This is always turned out to be true VS trying to outsmart the users – trying to design the perfect feature. I’ve seen it failing again and again with startups.

Know when to get into action – I love people with a bias for action. And I absolutely detest the approach of “we should iterate on this for another week.” I don’t buy “slow is smooth and smooth is fast.” And again, especially for products pre-PMF.

Until a startup reaches PMF, stop trying to be smart. Get your PMF and do whatever you want. Everything changes then.