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I think you're a bit off base about the implementation level not making much of a difference compared to the strategy level. Have you never seen engineers essen

by carc 11y ago

I think you're a bit off base about the implementation level not making much of a difference compared to the strategy level. Have you never seen engineers essentially fail at building a spec because they couldn't implement something well enough? I've seen a team of full stack developers build an ambitious web UI with lots of complicated data visualizations/animations/interactions/etc. There were tons of performance issues because they did not understand the browser/javascript/css well enough to optimize things. A front end pro needed to go in and salvage the whole thing because it was not usable. Another anecdote I personally have is a friend who is obsessed with being an entrepreneur. He keeps coming up with these ideas that are actually pretty decent, but he tries to build them himself (he's self taught but still doesn't really know what he's doing) and what he ends up with are things no one would ever, ever use twice. Strategy is nothing without good implementation, and implementation is nothing without good strategy.

eastbayjake 11y ago
> Have you never seen engineers essentially fail at building a spec because they couldn't implement something well enough? I've seen engineers fail at a task. I've never seen an entire startup fail because of bad engineering -- they fail because they don't have paying customers, and the lack of paying customers is usually not because "our app doesn't work just right." Users will keep using clunky apps that solve a real problem for them, but they abandon apps that don't solve a real problem. > He keeps coming up with these ideas that are actually pretty decent, but he tries to build them himself (he's self taught but still doesn't really know what he's doing) and what he ends up with are things no one would ever, ever use twice. That seems beside the point, doesn't it? We're not talking about whether implementation is completely unimportant, merely that the biggest lever is strategy (the idea itself, the marketing, the leadership that makes decisions about how to reach product-market fit) and not implementation. Let's say your friend is actually a semi-decent engineer. Would his app be 10% better if he were a 10% better engineer? Probably not. Yelp is ugly as sin but people keep using it because it solves a real problem. Tinder chat is broken beyond belief but people keep using it because it solves a real problem. Those companies have reached success through strategy and not implementation. You could make Yelp or Tinder 10% better from an engineering perspective, but that's not going to produce a 10% increase in users... I'd be surprised if it produced any growth in users at all actually.
- carc 11y ago
  Not necessarily disagreeing, but I'd like to point out that you your logic is based largely off of survivor bias. You've never seen an entire startup fail because of bad engineering probably because they never get to the point of relevance necessary for you to have heard of them. To use your example of yelp - it might not be a feat of engineering, but it's well engineered enough to not get in the way of the problem it solves.

by carc 11y ago

eastbayjake 11y ago

> Have you never seen engineers essentially fail at building a spec because they couldn't implement something well enough? I've seen engineers fail at a task. I've never seen an entire startup fail because of bad engineering -- they fail because they don't have paying customers, and the lack of paying customers is usually not because "our app doesn't work just right." Users will keep using clunky apps that solve a real problem for them, but they abandon apps that don't solve a real problem. > He keeps coming up with these ideas that are actually pretty decent, but he tries to build them himself (he's self taught but still doesn't really know what he's doing) and what he ends up with are things no one would ever, ever use twice. That seems beside the point, doesn't it? We're not talking about whether implementation is completely unimportant, merely that the biggest lever is strategy (the idea itself, the marketing, the leadership that makes decisions about how to reach product-market fit) and not implementation. Let's say your friend is actually a semi-decent engineer. Would his app be 10% better if he were a 10% better engineer? Probably not. Yelp is ugly as sin but people keep using it because it solves a real problem. Tinder chat is broken beyond belief but people keep using it because it solves a real problem. Those companies have reached success through strategy and not implementation. You could make Yelp or Tinder 10% better from an engineering perspective, but that's not going to produce a 10% increase in users... I'd be surprised if it produced any growth in users at all actually.

carc 11y ago
Not necessarily disagreeing, but I'd like to point out that you your logic is based largely off of survivor bias. You've never seen an entire startup fail because of bad engineering probably because they never get to the point of relevance necessary for you to have heard of them. To use your example of yelp - it might not be a feat of engineering, but it's well engineered enough to not get in the way of the problem it solves.