✴️ How I'm Making... #18

Steve Jobs, the visionary of our age. The leader who built Apple into a 3 trillion-dollar powerhouse. When he says something, we’d better listen.

But Jobs’ advice comes with conflicting evidence. Steve was a notorious perfectionist. In fact, the ipad had no calculator app for many years because no one had made a version specific to the ipad. The story goes…

This story, that came from someone who was working at Apple at the time, says that in the run up to the launch of the original iPad release, Steve Jobs called Scott Forstall (who was leading the software development for the tablet) into his office. Jobs then asked where the new calculator app designed specifically for the iPad was. To which Forstall replied that there wasn’t one. They were planning on using the iPhone version instead.

Jobs, who was known for his incredible attention to detail, wasn’t happy with this, as the app looked awful in his eyes. He subsequently pulled the app, much to Forstall’s chagrin, and it simply fell to the bottom of the pile of things that needed to be done for every update or upgrade to iOS and then iPadOS ever since.

So clearly, the advice comes with some caveats. But what are they? How can we avoid spending months working on something that no one wants, and ship it instead?

✏️ Summary

• Clashes are good.

• Regression towards the mean.

• MVP - Minimum Valuable Product

📈 How to know when to ship

1. Clashes are good.

Most advice in the startup world is geared towards first-time, early stage founders. This is because the number of people that fall into this category outweigh the veterans by probably multiple orders of magnitude.

Think of it in terms of running. How many people in the world have the capacity to run 100 meters without stopping? Of those people, how many can run it in less than 15 seconds? 10? 9.58?

In each of those filtering categories, the number goes from 7 Billion, to probably 3 Billion, to 190, and finally, 1.

I know what you’re thinking - So what does this mean? How is this useful to you and me, scrambling along to get things off the ground?

This means that the further along we go on our respective journeys, the more in-tune we have to be with the different levers that determine the outcome of a system.

Any place where internal dialogue clashes with external pressures (like your internal voice telling you something is not ready, but others are telling you to ship) is a place where you stand to gain from close examination.

The first factor to consider closely is context.

2. Regression towards the mean

When I was at school, I used to do a lot of art.

Back then, I absolutely hated someone seeing something I was working on when it wasn’t finished. This feeling transferred over directly to entrepreneurship.

For most first time founders, the idea of letting someone see something you’re working on, which you are afraid is not good enough, can be paralyzing. Since starting my journey, I have put in a lot of effort to overcoming this feeling. In that sense, I am very much in-tune with this pitfall.

Context matters because the most popular, widely accepted truths are going to be geared towards the mode - aka the most common subset of that group.

In any skill-based domain, the mode is going to be the beginner group. The people that are just starting out.

So if the popular advice seems incorrect, you can look at the context you have, that the mode may not.

In my case, I can look at my own experiences. I have been working on product development and strategy for a consumer goods startup that has grown to do over $2M MRR. I am familiar with the timelines of consumer product adoption, and what factors need to be considered before launching a new product line.

I also know that while I have some experience as a technical product manager, I am a beginner when it comes to actual programming and software development. This means that I am likely to make mistakes in the implementation of code, and products will take longer to ship.

It’s a multivariate equation, where the premise has to be absolute self-accountability and honesty.

3. MVP - Minimum Valuable Product

So that’s all fine and well - but how do we know when something should be put in front of someone?

I would say the right place is when a product has enough going for it to be valuable.

This is a helpful metric because it forces you to ask:

1. For whom is it valuable?

2. What is the value it provides?

If you don’t have an answer for either of those questions, then you need to take a step back from building, and gather evidence by talking to users.

The caveat here is, if the target audience of your product is you, and you can articulate exactly what parts of you it is valuable for and why, your only question becomes “How can I find other people that are like me in this way?”

🔗 POLL: Name My Startup!

I need your help!

I am building an AI copilot for non-writer founders that want to create structured blog posts without spending hours writing or hundreds of dollars on freelancers.

What should I name this thing??

What’s Next?

Right now, I need to make my thing valuable - I’ll have an update for you next week.

That’s all for now!

Remember to listen to your gut! If you’re scared to ship, maybe it’s actually the right thing to do.

Ben | X