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As a customer of startups, I really abhor this attitude. Especially when it lingers for years after the initial product launch. Which is shockingly common. For

As a customer of startups, I really abhor this attitude. Especially when it lingers for years after the initial product launch. Which is shockingly common. For example, partially complete features are often completely abandoned for years and years, because they're "good enough." Unfortunately, good enough, often means unhappy customers actively looking for new competitors. One company in particular, I absolutely despise, because of this. They are pretty much only focused on releasing new features. The old features, while functional, are in desperate need of improvement. (In many very obvious ways.) This particular company had a good IPO. Their stock then dropped 90%. I wonder why.

jrochkind1 3y ago
> They are pretty much only focused on releasing new features. My guess is that behavior is NOT motivated by the theory "deliver early drafts with more smaller iterations", but is instead motivated by the theory "the people who decide to buy our products do it based on feature checklists, rather than quality of anything." These are actually not even aligned theories. The "smaller iterations with early drafts" appraoch is best done with fewer features included, not more features that are incomplete. Many markets incentivize companies to deliver crappy software, and it is frustrating, but not, I think the fault of an agile/iterative/deliver-early-and-often approach. If you can make the most money by delivering a giant feature list of crappily implemented poorly-thought out features that don't fit well together, you'll tend to do that, regardless of theory of project management.
mvdtnz 3y ago
> Unfortunately, good enough, often means unhappy customers actively looking for new competitors. Here's the thing though - it's your intuition that customers are unhappy, but the startup in question has actual data. It's entirely possible that a small group of people similar to you are unhappy but for a majority of the userbase the feature has gone as far as it needs to. Resources are scarce and priorities need to be changed, which sometimes means making hard decisions.
- Retric 3y ago
  Alternatively, the rapid failure after IPO is a suggestion that their customers weren’t happy, but the plan was short term pump and dump. It’s not always easy to say if something is stupid or fraudulent, but sometimes it really is just a scam.
  - mvdtnz 3y ago
    We'd need a lot more information about this one particular case but I'd bet almost anything that a 90% drop in share price was caused by something a lot deeper than customers being unhappy at some unfinished features. I intentionally didn't address that half of his comment for that reason.
    - Retric 3y ago
      That’s reasonable, though I am not suggesting a pump and dump is only going to show up in the code base just that it would also look like they described.
  - sanderjd 3y ago
    I find it so weird to look at the stock market to approximate this kind of metric. Stock prices have more to do with things like the ebb and flow of the risk profile of institutional investors, than with customer satisfaction with specific features.
    - Retric 3y ago
      Institutional investors care a great deal about metrics like customer retention indirectly because it influences customer lifetime value which then impacts profitability all of which is dependent on customer satisfaction. Groupon for example has decent consumer metrics, except they couldn’t keep the business partners happy which resulted in their ultimate collapse. Finding weaknesses in companies businesses models like this can both be extraordinarily profitable for institutional investors directly and create an aura of competence to attract more investors.
Hermitian909 3y ago
Having been on the other side of this - often times our users are unhappy with the unfinished features, but our customers are delighted. That is to say, the CxO or director we've sold to has everything on their checklist and is getting "good enough" results out of their organization. Our job is to understand which of the unfinished features will cause grumbling and which will motivate users to convince an executive to switch to a competitor. It's very unusual for the former to ever be worth prioritizing.
- quickthrower2 3y ago
  Yeah it is the sad but true state of affairs. Bad for users is OK as long as it makes money. But without pleasing the people you sell to how do you compete?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - dyesdyes 3y ago
    I think you misunderstood. His point is that the user who uses the product can be different from the one decides and pays for it (often the case in B2B). So you actually pleases the people you sell to, just not this specific type of users.

jrochkind1 3y ago

> They are pretty much only focused on releasing new features. My guess is that behavior is NOT motivated by the theory "deliver early drafts with more smaller iterations", but is instead motivated by the theory "the people who decide to buy our products do it based on feature checklists, rather than quality of anything." These are actually not even aligned theories. The "smaller iterations with early drafts" appraoch is best done with fewer features included, not more features that are incomplete. Many markets incentivize companies to deliver crappy software, and it is frustrating, but not, I think the fault of an agile/iterative/deliver-early-and-often approach. If you can make the most money by delivering a giant feature list of crappily implemented poorly-thought out features that don't fit well together, you'll tend to do that, regardless of theory of project management.

mvdtnz 3y ago

> Unfortunately, good enough, often means unhappy customers actively looking for new competitors. Here's the thing though - it's your intuition that customers are unhappy, but the startup in question has actual data. It's entirely possible that a small group of people similar to you are unhappy but for a majority of the userbase the feature has gone as far as it needs to. Resources are scarce and priorities need to be changed, which sometimes means making hard decisions.

Retric 3y ago
Alternatively, the rapid failure after IPO is a suggestion that their customers weren’t happy, but the plan was short term pump and dump. It’s not always easy to say if something is stupid or fraudulent, but sometimes it really is just a scam.
- mvdtnz 3y ago
  We'd need a lot more information about this one particular case but I'd bet almost anything that a 90% drop in share price was caused by something a lot deeper than customers being unhappy at some unfinished features. I intentionally didn't address that half of his comment for that reason.
  - Retric 3y ago
    That’s reasonable, though I am not suggesting a pump and dump is only going to show up in the code base just that it would also look like they described.
- sanderjd 3y ago
  I find it so weird to look at the stock market to approximate this kind of metric. Stock prices have more to do with things like the ebb and flow of the risk profile of institutional investors, than with customer satisfaction with specific features.
  - Retric 3y ago
    Institutional investors care a great deal about metrics like customer retention indirectly because it influences customer lifetime value which then impacts profitability all of which is dependent on customer satisfaction. Groupon for example has decent consumer metrics, except they couldn’t keep the business partners happy which resulted in their ultimate collapse. Finding weaknesses in companies businesses models like this can both be extraordinarily profitable for institutional investors directly and create an aura of competence to attract more investors.

Hermitian909 3y ago

Having been on the other side of this - often times our users are unhappy with the unfinished features, but our customers are delighted. That is to say, the CxO or director we've sold to has everything on their checklist and is getting "good enough" results out of their organization. Our job is to understand which of the unfinished features will cause grumbling and which will motivate users to convince an executive to switch to a competitor. It's very unusual for the former to ever be worth prioritizing.

quickthrower2 3y ago
Yeah it is the sad but true state of affairs. Bad for users is OK as long as it makes money. But without pleasing the people you sell to how do you compete?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- dyesdyes 3y ago
  I think you misunderstood. His point is that the user who uses the product can be different from the one decides and pays for it (often the case in B2B). So you actually pleases the people you sell to, just not this specific type of users.