Political Philosophy & Product Development
A different lens for building great products and companies
Hi all —
Weird week. I had a strange revelation that might explain why my approach to product and entrepreneurship is so different and so hard for others to understand.
It’s the same reason politicians seem to speak different languages: They have different underlying philosophies and value systems.
This post is about political philosophy as it relates to building companies and making things work.
In the tech space, there is a generally accepted, dominant approach to building a business. Let us call this the left-leaning product philosophy. The left-leaning product philosophy probably overlaps with left-leaning personal politics, but I’m sure it’s not a 100% overlap.
This product philosophy has three main components:
Start with data, reason, & theory: We deeply analyze the numbers and the news. Based on that, we create a logical explanation for what’s going on and what we should do about it.
Design for the world you envision: Next, we take a step back and imagine a different future - one where we’ve accomplished our mission and our business is dominant. What does the product look like then? Design that out and work towards it.
Stage well-intentioned interventions: Nudge people towards our product and to use it the way we intend. Guide them to our better future; when they change themselves by understanding our vision, they will adopt our product and evangelize our mission.
The underlying belief could be summarized as: Idealists intervene to create a better world.
It’s dominant for a reason: This philosophy makes sense, sounds right, and feels good. It gives a ton of clarity, too. It’s the language that investors speak - the language of the possible tomorrow and the heroic founders. And all the commonly used business best practices “integrate” with this philosophy: Mission / Vision / Values statements. Pitch decks. Inspirational leadership.
And I think this philosophy is generally wrong and harmful to entrepreneurs.
The right-leaning product philosophy is very different and much less emotionally satisfying. It counters the left-leaning product philosophy with 3 different components:
Start with reality: Data and logic will always you astray; learn what’s real with firsthand experience in the trenches.
Design for today: Ship something today that’s tightly focused on a real use-case. Nail today’s business.
Leave room for surprise & emergence: You don’t - and can’t - know or predict everything about your customers as they use your product. As they use it, new use cases and opportunities will emerge that lead to bigger and better things.
The underlying belief could be summarized as: Leverage reality to earn your right to survive, then figure out how to thrive.
Far from a rallying cry. But in my experience, this is closer to correct, by which I mean “more likely to help entrepreneurs figure their business out.”
Why does the right-leaning philosophy work? My hunch is that most startups struggle to find meaningful traction, usually a result of not building something the market actually wants. The left-leaning philosophy deludes founders to believe that potential customers have the time or interest to care about the future the founder imagines; it is this delusion and self importance that leads founders down a path of building a product nobody wants.
The right-leaning philosophy, on the other hand, obsessed over what works in the real world. This makes you more likely to build a product that gets traction. As a downside, it’s often hard to explain a product that works in practice but not yet in theory. Or to explain a product direction you know intuitively but not explicitly.
A last point: It may help to have the pragmatist right-leaning product philosophy ~95% of the time, but an idealist left-leaning product philosophy can help to reframe problems and sell people on joining your cause. Perhaps it speaks poorly of humans that people speaking confidently about an imagined future is viewed as reassuring and inspiring; it does seem to be motivational in practice.