Show your product math

I’m writing again. Like many of the great bloggers (Fred Wilson and Seth Godin come to mind), I find that daily writing forces me to organize my thoughts.

I spent the morning running and listening to Reid Hoffman’s Master of Scale podcast. Hoffman interviewed Mark Zuckerberg about shipping early and often.

This got me thinking about RiskGenius. Like most founders I like to believe I am okay with breaking stuff. But do I act this way? Does my company act this way?

Most importantly, I got stuck on the question: “can enterprise software break?” Our users are insurance underwriters. My first reaction is a big “no!” things can’t break for insurance.

But legacy applications inside an insurer “break” all the time.

Facebook, with its billions of users, has way more to worry about when it comes to breaking stuff. RiskGenius doesn’t quite have a billion users. I am guessing we can get away with more “breaks.”

I also thought about the opportunities we are missing to engage our users with new features. I have found underwriters and brokers are extremely hungry for new software that works better or improves productivity. We should be engaging these users are a continual basis (thankfully we have a Senior Product Manager that is starting this process).

The phrase that has always stuck with me that was repeated on the podcast:

“Show your math”