The simple Secret behind wonderful Products
Where do great Products come from?
We all know fantastic products when we see them. They make you smile, they touch your soul. They make you wonder. They help you discover.
They give you super powers.
But what leads to a truly great Product?
The way to a great product is actually really simple (simple ≠ easy).
In a nutshell you can distill it down to one thing. It is about caring.
About caring more than others do, ever did & ever will.
Mark Zuckerberg put it incredibly well in his post when he reflected on the last 10 years of Facebook …
[W]hy were we the ones to build this? We were just students. We had way fewer resources than big companies. If they had focused on this problem, they could have done it.
The only answer I can think of is: we just cared more.
It’s a simple observation, yet so true.
Excelling at something you don’t care about is incredibly hard. Whatever your expertise or level of mastery. Your effort is easily dwarfed by someone who really cares and is willing to learn and question the status quo over and over and over again.
It might only be anecdotal evidence but I’m not surprised that the truly game changing products I’ve come across lately were created by people that often were regarded as hopelessly doomed by bystanders.
Underdogs. Naive. Not up for the task.
Yet all of them really really cared. A lot.
Cared more than others.
Facebook, Google, Dropbox, Twitter, Netflix, Stripe, Buffer, Github, Apple, Airbnb, Intercom, Path, Dart, Nest, AngelList, Medium, Quora, Quibb, Square, … (I could go on and on ☺)
Everything else you strive for just somehow magically tends to fall in line when you really care …
- Attention to Detail
- Understanding the Job to be done
- Super-powering your Customers
- Communicating what you’ve created & why it matters
- Attracting Talent, Customers, Advisors, Friends, Fans, Investors, …
- Going that extra Mile
- …
Excelling at something you don’t care about is incredibly hard.
Pick something you deeply care about.
Everything else gets easier from there.
If you found this post helpful follow me on twitter where I tweet about Software Development & Product Management ☺
Also make sure to check out Blossom an Agile/Lean Project Management Tool I’m currently working on ☺
