On Speed Of Execution

On speed of execution:

Last week one of our customers had asked for usage analytics. Analytics were shipped before the week ended. End-to-end, full-stack. We also made analytics available through our API.

A classic startup advice is to move fast and break things. This phrase is used so often that before Reform, I took it for granted. It just seemed like a best practice, but I never really questioned why it is so important. It actually made more sense to me to be thoughtful and tactical about what to ship and how fast. Although that’s true in some cases of course, it’s certainly not in most.

After spending the last year as a founder, here’s my answer to that question: you can think of a startup as a video game, and what you’re really trying to do is level up. As you level up, you uncover a set of truths that were previously unknown to you; you get to learn more about your customers, your industry, how to build a business, how to sell, etc. You simply just become better at the game. You certainly are a worse Super Mario player at level 1 than you are at level 10, and your friend is certainly a better Super Mario player at level 20 than you are at level 10.

If you’re moving slow, your rate of improvement is slow, and the next level just gets harder and further. What you’re really doing when you move fast is shortening your iteration cycle, accelerating your rate of improvement, helping you arrive at the truth faster. As you uncover more truths, your chances of success simply compound. 

As soon as we shipped analytics, that customer expressed interest in being able to filter usage analytics by use case. That’s really the thing they cared most about, the truth we hoped to uncover. If it had taken us a month to ship analytics, then we wouldn't have gotten that feedback until much later, delaying our ability to arrive at the true truth while also decelerating our rate of improvement.

So do move fast and break things. Happy building my friends :)