It's about a journey, not a destination. Building a startup is exploration and not following a pre-planned route. Even if we make such stories in retrospect.
I always say that in the beginning you don’t even know the right questions to ask. You even have to discover them.
Building a thing - a product, a company, whatever - is like going on a treasure hunt but without the map. You are also responsible for discovering and drawing the map.
It won’t be easy, adventure, sharks and lions await. Enjoy the ride or just skip it. It won’t happen without a bloody nose … or more. Which is ok.
With the journey hypothesis, not only is the destination unknown; it's unknowable.
No matter how much up-front research we do, we can't ideate a successful product. If it were possible, product development would be very much like early-stage drug development a few years back.
A lot of early-stage random brute-force tests combined with rigorous (or I'd hope so, at least) scrutiny to see what might actually work.
If that were the case, the landscape would be dominated by a few biggest incumbents—Googles and Facebooks of this world. Instead, we still see a vibrant startup scene with many small players trying to nibble off a bit of a big pie for themselves.
I always say that in the beginning you don’t even know the right questions to ask. You even have to discover them.
Building a thing - a product, a company, whatever - is like going on a treasure hunt but without the map. You are also responsible for discovering and drawing the map.
It won’t be easy, adventure, sharks and lions await. Enjoy the ride or just skip it. It won’t happen without a bloody nose … or more. Which is ok.
With the journey hypothesis, not only is the destination unknown; it's unknowable.
No matter how much up-front research we do, we can't ideate a successful product. If it were possible, product development would be very much like early-stage drug development a few years back.
A lot of early-stage random brute-force tests combined with rigorous (or I'd hope so, at least) scrutiny to see what might actually work.
If that were the case, the landscape would be dominated by a few biggest incumbents—Googles and Facebooks of this world. Instead, we still see a vibrant startup scene with many small players trying to nibble off a bit of a big pie for themselves.