Guidelines for how we act as a company.
Nick and I have been working on a project for the past month and a half now and we’ve reached a milestone that I’ve been trying to realize for over a year.
One that needs to be improved, tested, iterated upon and additional features added to for it to become something truly substantial. However, despite all of that the product solves a problem and provides value.
As it was being completed I jokingly said to Nick that I should be using the platform to get his approval of some design work I was putting into the marketing page. Incredibly enough I sent him a revised version through the platform and within minutes I had an approval receipt that he’d signed off on it. I no longer had to wonder if there was work still to be done, and I had proof of that.
We’d successfully solved the problem we set out to.
Having now made something that was just once an idea means that things will change going forward. There’s more to consider, and while there will be the inevitable pivots, we’ve placed a stake in the ground that we must start from. It’s a commitment that needs some definition of what the end goal will be. More importantly how we’ll get there.
Nick wrote a great piece detailing the product vision for vrbtm, but what does it mean to be the company of vrbtm.
Recently I was asked if I was happy, and for everything on paper describing the situation in which they were asking about I should be. However, caught off guard by the question I answered honestly that I was not. Explaining that the reason I felt this way is that I didn’t feel I was able to provide value any longer, and that I was no longer useful to realizing the objectives being set.
From that situation I knew the qualifications we should be measuring ourselves against as we build vrbtm. Which is to:
Be Useful. Be Valuable.
Every product decision should be qualified by asking if the new feature is useful, and if so that it provides value to those using it. Every person working with us should be useful in ways that add value to the company and the product we’re building — and they should always feel that they are doing so. Every company and individual using the product should find that it is useful to them and adds value to their business.
There should be no instance where something is only either useful or valuable. It must be both.
We set a stake in the ground from which we’ll start, and we’ve detailed the place we want to be in the future. Now we have the guidelines for how we’ll get there.
Be Useful. Be Valuable.
