When ‘good enough’ is the enemy of ‘perfect’
However many innovative start-ups we meet, it’s rare that we come across the one that will actually change our lives, in that way that makes our future grandkids struggle to imagine how differently we used to do things.
Remember when you had to schedule your time around the TV or otherwise miss a new episode of your favourite show? When internet-connected phones were instructed via clunky micro keyboard instead of full-length touchscreens? Or when e-commerce was niche and it was still easier to walk into a store and trust the salesperson’s opinion?
To accomplish the kind of innovation that causes genuine shifts in our daily behavior, it takes a certain kind of mentality, drive and discipline. You can’t achieve the brilliance of Netflix, iPhone or Amazon by shifting goalposts and downsizing your ambition.
Yes, with startups you most often have to adapt, make things work enough to reach milestones, and achieve small wins to show progress. But once we start shifting our goals posts, it’s only a short journey to settling for ‘good enough’.
Trigo is a company that has not messed around with their goal posts, and it shows. On May 6, Germany’s second largest supermarket chain, REWE, announced its partnership with Trigo to create a cashier-less checkout store in downtown Cologne. This comes after partnerships with two other leading national chains — Tesco (UK’s largest supermarket chain) and Shufersal (Israel’s largest).
In pursuing the holy grail of retail tech — the seamless checkout — Trigo has set its sights on a non-compromise solution — one that fits all stores, and allows shoppers to behave completely naturally. This is an enormously complicated challenge. No wonder that most of their competitors, including Amazon Go, have made the challenge significantly easier for themselves by compromising on at least one of the key requirements, either by limiting the size of the store, by lowering accuracy goals, or by building new stores to make their tech work.
Trigo, for its part, has kept the goalposts firmly in place. It is meeting the challenges without compromising on accuracy, scalability, or cost reduction. Maintaining focus in this way has to be part of the DNA of the startup. In Trigo’s case, it certainly is.
Trigo was founded by two brothers: CEO Michael and CTO Daniel Gabay, who are also both veterans of elite IDF military units. In fact, the vast majority of their team comes from similar backgrounds and discipline. From this defense background they have taken the principle of unswerving commitment to the mission above all else. This mentality has become part of a shared culture across the stakeholders, the founders, the team and the investors.
Temptations to cut corners to show short term progress will always be there. But keeping the goalposts in place is the surest way to get results that are not just good enough, but the best they can be.
