Staying opinionated as you grow
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Staying opinionated as you grow
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Re: Staying opinionated as you grow
#2Point of order: "enshittification" does not mean what the author's using it to mean. It does not just mean "the product got worse". It means "the product was purposefully made worse in order to capture additional value from the customer," i.e. a rug pull.
Maybe I'm being pedantic, but I'd hate to see such a useful term for corporate malfeasance diluted.
Re: Staying opinionated as you grow
#3Defending focus is way harder than adding features.
When you're building, adding yet another feature can sometimes shave off all the edges that made you successful in the first place.
Same with messaging. The more you try to sound universal, the less anyone hears you.
Strong opinions that are honestly held and communicated are such great signs of respect. It's refreshing to see: "This is who we are. If it's not for you, that's okay."
Good piece.
Re: Staying opinionated as you grow
#4It was a let down to be bought into the "hook" that saying no, taking focus, is the key to continued long term success as a scaled company, only for it to devolve into how courageous it is to have a simple homepage.
I wanted to read a new story; one about an internal debate where the easy answer was to "just do it," but a hard no is what actually saved everything.
Surely that story exists.
Re: Staying opinionated as you grow
#5Point of order: "enshittification" does not mean what the author's using it to mean. It does not just mean "the product got worse". It means "the product was purposefully made worse in order to capture additional value from the customer," i.e. a rug pull. Maybe I'm being pedantic, but I'd hate to see such a useful term for corporate malfeasance diluted.
Yep. The irony being that "enshittification," properly deployed, can actually lead a company to even more success. Product people always think "having the best product" wins the day, but there are billions of dollars made through a perfectly baked enshittified pie.
Re: Staying opinionated as you grow
#6Point of order: "enshittification" does not mean what the author's using it to mean. It does not just mean "the product got worse". It means "the product was purposefully made worse in order to capture additional value from the customer," i.e. a rug pull. Maybe I'm being pedantic, but I'd hate to see such a useful term for corporate malfeasance diluted.
Well, Cory recently said in a podcast we can use it to mean "product got worse", so I've become less pedantic on this point fwiw. (I think it was in the episode of Adam Conover from about a month ago)
Re: Staying opinionated as you grow
#7"They get worse because they need to keep pleasing new users, new needs, address every edge case."
That is not what enshittification is about, and not who it is about. You don't enshittify to please users, you do it to please shareholders.
Re: Staying opinionated as you grow
#8Point of order: "enshittification" does not mean what the author's using it to mean. It does not just mean "the product got worse". It means "the product was purposefully made worse in order to capture additional value from the customer," i.e. a rug pull. Maybe I'm being pedantic, but I'd hate to see such a useful term for corporate malfeasance diluted.
Yep. The irony being that "enshittification," properly deployed, can actually lead a company to even more success. Product people always think "having the best product" wins the day, but there are billions of dollars made through a perfectly baked enshittified pie.
"The Market for Lemons" has always been a thing. If the user can't immediately distinguish between "Looks good at first and is good all the way through" and "Looks good and gets crappier as you go along", then both will be forced by the market to charge the same amount; but the latter one can afford to do it at a price the former can't afford.
Re: Staying opinionated as you grow
#9This brings to mind the Tony Hsieh quote, "You show what your values really are by the opportunities you turn down."
All successful startups are fighting a battle against entropy. And entropy is becoming indistinguishable from all the other companies out there. Which means losing what made them succeed in the first place.
This is why company culture is important. You need to know what your values are. And then you need to maintain them. Even at the cost of the wrong short-term profitable opportunities.
Re: Staying opinionated as you grow
#10"They get worse because they need to keep pleasing new users, new needs, address every edge case." That is not what enshittification is about, and not who it is about. You don't enshittify to please users, you do it to please shareholders.
At one point the user to please becomes a stakeholder, the need is a metric that needs to go up, the edge case is legislation or a specific need. From a user's point of view, services like Spotify or Slack have been stagnant for a decade, but I'm sure that in the background they've been doing work costing hundreds of millions in investments and developer time.