My Product Philosophy

It's easier to build product when you've clear guiding force. To that end, I've formed some principles over the years.

They're not perfect, not mine alone (mostly borrowed from great product teams I've worked with), and not set in stone. But they help me quickly make decisions and stay focused on what's important.

1. Deeply Care About the User

We build products that we want to use. That we can proudly show to our friends. That includes every aspect of UX - beautifully designed, fast, and reliable.

2. Own the Problem

We think deeply about the problem ourselves. We don't outsource this to users. To UX. To researchers. To market surveys. It has to be owned by builders.

3. Iterate

Building great products is iterations. Move fast. Vision is a blurry blueprint. It's supposed to be that way.

4. Relentless Obsession

Obsess every aspect of the products: button clicks, docs style, border style, repeat usage, loading performance ... from trivial to big picture. That's the only way to craft a great experience.

5. Pursue Simplicity

All else equal, aim for simplicity. We constantly cut and chop to make this simple.

6. Speak to Users

Talk to at least 10 users a week. Don't question their asks. But don't take their asks on face value either.

7. Macro-optimistic, micro-pessimistic

Optimistic about how the product will work in the long run, but really impatient with the current state. We keep challenging the status quo and making progress for our users.

8. Make Hard Decisions

Don't ship to feel good. Don't ship to make someone happy. Don't retain features for the sake of it. We constantly think about how to solve customers' problems in simplest steps. That means dropping features not working, rewriting code we wrote before, questioning decisions we made ... and we do all with sincerity.

9. Original Thought Matters

Original thought is hard. But you want to always do something new and different. Solving things uniquely even for the smallest niche is worthwhile. People appreciate unique things - results in free marketing, passionate users ... all happen for unique ideas and products. A key test of good ideas: people spontaneously want to tell someone they tried.

10. ABC => Always Be C(shipping) and C(selling)

If you also follow any written or unwritten product philosophy, I'd love to hear about it.