Just Make Something Good
I haven’t posted a quote in awhile, but Matt Linderman from 37Signals said something that hit home with me.
If you trust the people, the process, and the goal, you don’t need all the bullshit trust-builders like specs, documents, and promises to make you feel secure. You can just make something good.
We are building a few products right now and we never really waste time creating specs and documents; instead we just start building and figure things out along the way. Because of this our end result is something that was created out of an evolution of our original idea, and is better because of it. It is very common to change directions a little bit once you’ve started. But, just as Matt says, the key factor in this is the trust in the people you work with. We have searched long and hard to find people we can trust to help us create our products, it has been a bumpy road, but well worth it!
Cameron Olthuis is the Founder of
that definately hits home with me. very insightful.
Well….. kind of? At first maybe that sounds good, but is it really?
What’s the exit strategy? If it’s “get acquired”, “get VC funded”, “go public”, etc. the approach might be quite different from “grow a great company”. Not knowing the exit is not undefined. There is a set of behaviors that go along with that, too.
I see tons of new companies that produce almost good stuff. A bigger commitment to planning and execution, with a long-term vision, would have made the difference. Is that wasting time creating specs and documents? If you are focused on the current vision only, no one is on the longer term vision. If some is on that, how do they know what you know (so they can project forward?). That takes structured information flow. And if that’s not efficient, the waste can kill you.
It’s very hard to do it right. Suggesting it’s not hard doesn’t make it any easier. That’s my take at least.
John, This post was meant for the actual production of the product. But since you brought it up I do feel that most of the time there is too much time wasted on business plans, etc. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t have a business plan, but I often see way too much put into them and 99% of the time it changes along the way.