Lewis Cirne on why software companies struggle to innovate after their first big success. He argues that founders need to build a product-focused culture to pull off a second act, not just ride the first one.
Most software companies go through this arc where the original idea the company was founded on has a high growth curve. The company brings in mature management and they kind of get good at distributing and selling, growing the top line and you build this engine that gets really good at that. But it's very hard for the company to come up with a second act, a new fundamental idea that's totally, totally new and disruptive that goes beyond the first idea. In fact, I don't think there's more than five companies that have really done it well. Apple obviously did it very well. Microsoft did it well, going from the OS to applications back in the 90s. Oracle, you could argue, did it when they went from the database to apps. Now what all those companies have in common is led by founder, very product focused, and the founder was so obsessed on product that like, so I created the next product in January of 12 in my cabin in Tahoe, and I'm very obsessed on it. And so that's our next act. And we think it's 10 times bigger than our current act. So I'm not saying it's going to happen like 100%, but I believe it will. And more importantly, I believe that we want to create the culture where we're never just kind of satisfied with what we've created in the past.
O processo de reconhecer limites, mesmo quando a vida parece exigir sempre mais.
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