'Making Tradeoffs - The Five Skills' by Bob Moesta

Making trade-offs. I was told to optimize, make it to be the best it can be on all dimensions, and We talk about these requirements of everything it has to be, but ultimately, Jason Fried, who's the one who said it, is you're better off with a kick-ass half than a half-ass whole. What it really means is the fact that I can't do it all. I feel like when you look at a set of product requirements, it's a freaking unicorn. It's got to do it all, and it's got to do it all in this time and this cost. You start to realize, well, what's going to give? What happens is We fix scope, we fix quality, so the only thing that can move is cost and time. And what I've learned is the exact opposite. If I actually fix cost and time and make the scope variable, I can do way better. And so what happens is you start to actually really think about what is— what's really needed versus the wish list of what everybody says they want. And the notion of consensus is like, I've never seen a good product ever produced by consensus. This is the ability to make the decision of what's in and what's out, or what takes the primary position, what takes a secondary position. It's not easy. But without the other— without prototyping to learn, without causal structures, without knowing demand, without understanding empathetic perspective, I actually can't do this. So the reason why it was hard for me to take was this whole aspect of, like, I had to learn all these other skills to get there. Right, this is the way I look at it. I got to create desire. There has to be a desire for the product, and I start with desire. I don't end with desire. Most people start with the technology. Oh, we can do this, who wants it? I actually start with always the demand side and move over to the supply side, and then it's viability, feasibility. But it's the intersection that actually requires— that's where innovation happens. There's a word that we all use that has multiple definitions, and it drives me out of my mind. The word is value. Because we talk about value, but there's 2 types of value. There's shareholder supply-side value, and there's demand-side value, which is the progress you're trying to help people make. And so I can actually help people make progress, but if I can't do it profitably, I'm not in business. And I can actually do something very profitably, but if it doesn't help people make progress, I'm still not in business. I gotta do both of them. And so part of this is why it's the intersection of the 3, is without desirability, there's nothing. And we keep thinking our product will create desire. And what I would tell you, and I have plenty of case studies to show, that demand exists today that is unmet Right now. And part of it is what's called non-consumption, people who want to make progress but can't because of access, knowledge, resources, et cetera. And so being able to understand where that is is what's most important.