Popular but Dangerous Advice for Product Managers
This weekend I was thinking about first releases. I’m building a couple at the moment, one for me and one for a client. First versions are tough. There is so much you’ll want to do, and so many promises built into a narrowly nascent product experience. You’ll ask yourself “Is it even worth launching this thing?” Probably. But maybe not.
Reid Hoffman famously stated the following: “If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.” Far be it for someone like me to question the founder of LinkedIn, but I worry many PM’s follow this advice blindly. Hoffman’s sixteen word manta is valuable and I, too, live by it in my Product career. But with caveats…
I was launching a new product with a new team once. The product was going to fill a significant gap in the market. We joined a leadership call to announce the upcoming launch of our minimal viable product. The scope was ample but our excitement was met with uncomfortable silence across the zoom space we shared. Finally, a leader in Customer Success made a plea. He said, “It just has to work. It can’t let down our clients.” Apparently, there was some history here. Everyone else on the call nodded. Quality. Of course. Heeding Hoffman’s advice requires a short operating manual. Sure, release something embarrassing but with two interconnected caveats...
How will you be embarrassed? Will the product be slow? Buggy? Lack a bunch of important features? All of these things might be perfectly fine if you can figure out the second rule …
Who are you “launching” for? If you’re building something for your high-value clients and it fails, do you lose trust? Does your brand take a hit? If you’re launching to your old college roommate in a beta environment, perhaps their tolerance for imperfection will be greater. On the flip side, why seek perfection for a beta version you’re sending to users with low expectations?
In practice, I’ve learned these lessons the hard way throughout my career and now spend a considerable time convincing my clients to not launch a faulty v1 to the masses. Or, conversely, pushing out the launch of a v1 to the masses when it meets the customer quality standards. (I prefer the former option as I enjoy agile.)
Hoffman’s rallying cry is a good one. It pushes us to get product out into people’s hands, which ultimately leads to a better v2. Action over inaction. However, his cavalier quotation requires a small disclaimer lest we lose the trust of those we’re trying to please.