What’s your big vision?
What’s your big vision? I get asked this a lot since I started Archie AI. It’s an easy question to ask but hard to answer well. What sounds great can be terrible in practice, and what sounds terrible can work out nicely in the long run.
There is a notion that things start with grand vision. Maybe management consultants played a role in creating this idea. CEOs often talk about aligning with the vision.
But in practice, how many startups truly begin with a grand vision? YC founder Paul Graham’s talks come to mind here. He’s often emphasized that predicting the future is incredibly challenging, even for experienced VCs. Most startups start by addressing a specific niche, often in ways that seem counterintuitive to outsiders. It’s rare for them to have a sweeping vision right from the start. It’s unlikely they have a grand vision on day one.
Did Mark Zuckerberg launch Facebook with a vision of connecting the world? Did Google start out planning to organize the world’s information? Did Airbnb begin with the goal of making people belong anywhere? Some startups are different. With lots of money backing them from the start, companies like OpenAI and SpaceX need a grand vision to attract that funding. This is often the case with repeat, successful founders.
For regular folks like us, is there much value in thinking about vision? Maybe now that I’m writing code, I’m too focused on execution and just in the build-and-ship mode. But I would argue that having been PM for a long time, I’m aware of the importance of thinking, brainstorming, and gathering evidence before taking action. And I like to write documents before jumping into things. But the PRD (Product Requirements Document) style, which is similar to a scientific paper vs vision, which feels more like a painting or music. PRD, at least to me, is all about presenting a hypothesis based on evidence and then testing it. Engineers and other PMs peer review all of this. It makes predictions for metrics or shows evidence, which is falsifiable. You can clearly with some tests (customer discussion, MVP launch etc) approve or reject its hypothesis.
A vision, from what I’ve seen, is often just a figment of imagination that people have to believe in. It’s important to have one and it can motivate the team, but it’s hard to be confident without going through a few cycles of building and shipping. Not sure it’s a day 1 thing.
I know as things progresses my answer to this question will change. But my answer at the moment is hazy one — mostly trying to build a product that solves problems in understanding complex codebase for developer friends I know. Nothing fancy. Let’s see where it goes from here.
