Reality and product strategy
A reflection 30 years in the making
Hi all —
I turned 30 this week, safely avoiding recognition by the Forbes 30 Under 30.
In my 20s, I went through an interesting trio of career steps:
Consulting at McKinsey
Harvard Business School
Starting a B2B SaaS startup from zero, through multiple pivots, to something that’s now working
Steps 1 & 2 were all about learning the “correct” way to explain and approach the world. In step 3, the “correct” worldview came into contact with reality and promptly self-immolated. This newsletter has been my attempt to unlearn and replace.
The dominant approach to business is one of rational post-hoc explanations. Imagine a newscaster trying to explain the backstory of a live feed from an an event she doesn’t understand. Her story may be logically coherent and “sound right”… but does it actually represent what happened?
Said differently: When we look at Amazon today and try to explain why it was successful, we can tell ourselves infinite different stories based on the facts and data. Out of these infinite stories come infinite lessons and best practices, some of which become turn into theories that sound right and get pushed by influential people.
Theories turn into articles, which turn into books. Books turn into interest groups. Interest groups turn into corporate departments and consulting firms. The new theory entrenches itself. Witches get burned. See: Open offices, Agile, OKRs.
All this happens without anyone assessing if this theory CAUSED success. Some things cause success; others enable success; most things just existed with no bearing on success.
This has been my problem with the state of knowledge in the startup world. There is so much “sounds right but isn’t” advice that prevents entrepreneurs from getting off the ground.
The dominant failure mode is building shiny software that nobody uses, seamless company operations to support a team that’s building a product that doesn’t matter, self-aggrandizing marketing that gets retweets from fellow techies but is incomprehensible to customers.
It is focusing everywhere but the only place that matters: On building a business.
So here is my 30-year reflection.
Business opportunities exist out there in the world: They are uncovered, not created. Any individual business is the dependent variable, relying on the shape of the opportunity that exists based on what’s going on in its customers’ worlds. And any software product is the expression of the founder’s approach to the shape of that business opportunity.
Which means that early-stage entrepreneurship is about obsessing over the shape of the business opportunity and how to tackle it. You can do everything else right, but if you don’t have this, you haven’t built a business.
I hope this newsletter is a weekly reminder to not lose focus. To figure your business out. To ignore the fads and build something real.
Strip everything else away; this is why you’re in the game.
-Rob