Three Lies and the Truth: Silicon Valley’s Biggest Lies

 

Living and working in Silicon Valley for most of my adult life has allowed me to view the industry from very close range for almost thirty years.  While in general I am thrilled to be in this business, there are definitely some strange myths that run around the valley.  You hear them repeated from time to time online and I always just shake my head.  I’m not really sure if people believe these things or they’re just saying things to drive engagement.

Here are my top three Silicon Valley lies.

Lie number three: First mover advantage

You hear all the time that getting to a market first is a massive advantage to the early entrant.  Thus, pressure is placed on teams to get in early and ship anything as long as you ship early.  This results in some really crappy code out in the wild.  

If you look at the history of software categories, it’s actually uncommon for first movers to dominate the category.  Think about things like smartphones (Apple was VERY late to this market) or web search (Google was after Yahoo and Alta Vista).  Xerox basically invented the modern computer (GUI, Mouse, Ethernet, etc.) but failed to capitalize on it.  In most cases, the first movers don’t win.

For early and emerging markets, there are so many unknowns that it’s just luck if you happen to pick the right product strategy.  I believe in moving quickly, but my focus is always to ship a quality product as quickly as you can.  Thus, my advice is always the same:  Focus on quality and velocity, not on being first to market.  Don’t ship crappy software; your users will forget who was second to market but they’ll remember your horrible bugs and crappy UX.

Lie number two: Innovation leads to success

Coming back to Apple for a moment, there is a myth that Apple has been successful in the market because they are an innovative company.  This leads to conversations about how innovative companies are as if this is actually something that you should care about.  First, Apple isn’t actually that innovative, and innovation is not their key strength as a company.  Apple’s key strengths are a good design ethic and a focus on end-to-end customer problems.  If you think about the iPod, it was iTunes that made it work.  MP3 players were a dime a dozen in those days but the iPod had a great design, looked amazing and had a full end-to-end solution via iTunes.  This made Apple successful.  They then replayed that with the iPhone and the App Store.  It’s about the end-to-end experience.

Similarly, Google derives the vast majority of their revenue from advertising.  However, Google Ads really became dominant after the DoubleClick acquisition.  They also acquired Android and several other key technologies.  Does this mean Google is somehow “less” than other companies who build all their own tech?  No, Google is a money-making machine and a Silicon Valley icon.  It really doesn’t matter if they build or buy their technology. What matters is what they do with it.  Google made good acquisitions and was able to operate at a huge scale, which made them dominant in the market.

Lie number one: Ideas are rare and valuable

People think good ideas are very rare.  They’re not.  Ideas are cheap and plentiful.  Execution and delivery is rare and hard.  

– Guillaume De Saint Marc (GSM, Cisco)

Almost everyone I talk to in Silicon Valley has a great idea for a startup.  If you hang around after work over beers, it’s common that this is the subject of conversation.  So there’s no lack of ideas.  However, turning your idea into a business is really really really hard.  It also requires an almost maniacal focus to really make things happen.

In fact, being a founder is so amazingly difficult, it is hard for founders to shift gears after their startup succeeds.  Hence the debate about “founder mode” and how long you can keep maniacally focusing on one thing instead of managing your people and running a business.  The very idea that someone who works in a medium to large scale company can suddenly take ownership and operate in “founder mode” is just bizarre to those of us working in these organizations but seems normal to founders and VC’s.

For product managers (PMs) like me,our job is primarily to sift through and evaluate ideas.  I have plenty of junior PMs who think that their job is to have great ideas.  That’s not really the case.  If you do your homework you will quickly find out that all the good ideas you need are already there. All you need to do is listen.

This is why hiring PMs based on their brilliant product ideas is not a great strategy.  You need PMs who can sift through the volume of ideas and focus on the ones that will engage and delight your customer.  Execution on a PM team is really hard and requires tedious research and effort.  The ideas are nice, but they’re not going to make or break your team.  Focus on the customer.  Solve their problems.  Move quickly to deliver high quality code.  Iterate.  If you can do those four things, you will have success as a product leader.  

The truth

The truth is that teams who ship at high velocity and quality win.

That’s it.  Move fast and produce a high quality product.  The odds are that if you can do this, you will be successful in the long term.  You don’t need amazing insights; you don’t need to have Steve Jobs levels of disruption; you don’t need to invent new computer science.  If you are moving fast, mistakes get corrected fast.  If you are shipping with high quality, your customers will stay loyal.  Operations, focus on the customer, and a high quality product—these are the things that drive success in the market.