Michael Seibel: How do you decide what to build next?

less than 1m read

·Nov 3, 2024

So the question is basically how do we figure out what to build next? Here's my answer: the reason why you have a part development cycle is that you can work on multiple things. Usually, there isn't a right answer. Usually, all of the things that you want to build won't work.

So what you need to do is you need to create a process in your company to build things quickly so that you can actually see whether they work or not, and then you can iterate them from there.

So it's far more important to have a tactically talented team that can build MVPs quickly in a non-frustrating way, and then measure the results, than it is to be a super genius who can imagine what's going to happen in the future without actually knowing.

Now, in the big picture, you have to have that imagination for your vision for where it's gonna be ten years from now. You have to have that imagination for the little technical tactical moves in the next three months.

Like, it's really hard to nail those if you have a process that can rip out things quickly and then only iterate the things that are working. That'll serve you far better.

Our mistake was that at justin.tv, it was thinking every time we've got the home run, let's only swing for home runs. And of course, it would take three months to do it because we got to make it perfect, right? And then the whole spike spiral of death.

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Michael Seibel: How do you decide what to build next?

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