Member-only story
Our Startup Failed Because We Didn’t Know the Difference Between Bad Problems and Good Problems
Just because something is a problem, it doesn’t mean you have to solve it
I remember once having a spirited debate with my co-founder about the best way to code a complex webform in our SaaS app. And, by “spirited debate,” I mean we spent the better part of two weeks arguing over who was right.
Fast forward 15 years, and I have trouble even remembering the name of the company we were building, which should tell you just how unimportant the argument was.
For what it’s worth, we were arguing about a webform deep in our app’s user dashboard. I was the backend software engineer, and I wanted to build the form in a way that would optimize for data efficiency at scale. My co-founder was a UX guy, and he wanted to optimize the form for useability at scale. The arguments we were making were nuanced technical arguments, and, in both cases, we were arguing that our solutions would lead to better outcomes once we had millions of users.
Our problem — and a major reason our company ultimately failed — wasn’t because we disagreed. After all, healthy disagreement between founders is a good thing because it helps startups avoid groupthink and the dangers of relying on flawed…
