

Build a system, not a product - erikstarck
http://blog.opportunitycloud.com/2009/12/05/build-a-system-not-a-product/

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staunch
I don't think I've discovered anything as profound or fundamental to the way I
think about business than when I (not so long ago) started trying to build
systems instead of products.

Your business is a money making machine. There are many components.
_Absolutely all_ of the components are hot swappable. Make each component work
until the entire machine does. If one component fails, swap it out with
something entirely different if you have to. As long as it keeps the machine
working, it doesn't really matter what it looks like.

Become attached only to the machine as a whole, not the individual components
it's made of.

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derefr
That sort of implies that all companies should gradually "become" whatever is
the most profitable kind of company, though. If it turns out that, say, spam
is the most profitable thing a company can do, then your todo-list app, or
even your brick-and-mortar home-and-garden store, would gradually swap out
parts (including employees and even founders) until it has become an online
spamming service!

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alexro
No. Don't fix it if it works. On the other side if your brick-and-mortar
company doesn't work then you better try something else.

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bcl
Very, very true. Just as no battle plan survives contact with the enemy, no
product idea survives contact with the customers. From the ground up you need
to plan for change, keeping your development cycle flexible so that you can
adapt and adjust to feedback from the customer.

It is like the difference between writing code with configuration variables
embedded in hundreds of places in the code or building it with a user
interface to allow the customer to adjust the settings.

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nicolaiwadstrom
Good words;

As an serial entrepreneur I would say that startups are not but organisms, but
organism that need bootstrapping (no not the ”business bootstrapping” –
shoestring budget model – but… ) the original sense of the word, a system need
to initial criticai mass and parameters to start working like an organism…

That is what the entrepreneur does, force the catch-22’s into a critical mass
that starts growing like an organism.

Cheers, NIcolai

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amackera
My largest problem with the "release early, release often" cycle, as well as
being adaptable, is that it's hard to release a product that I _feel_ isn't
complete. I have to fight the compulsion to cram features in that I feel are
killer features (despite whether they really are or not).

It seems like big products have huge releases. How can we prevent people from
quitting our application if they don't like the big first release?

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ivenkys
Pithy and true. Easier said than done of course.

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indiejade
Building products that function within an adaptable system seems to be the
gist of this parable. People don't really buy systems; they buy products. When
the seamlessness between product and system becomes transparent enough, the
product is essentially a system of interchangeable parts.

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andrewcooke
maybe learning isn't equivalent to getting rich, and maybe people are
motivated by the latter.

~~~
erikstarck
The point of the blog post is not that _you_ should be learning, it is that
your _startup_ should be learning.

A startup is almost by definition in an exploring phase. Key to success (and
infinite richness of course) is to acknowledge this fact and build your
startup as a learning entity.

The consequence of this insight is that it's counter-productive to keep things
secret or wait too long until launch.

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mapleoin
This should be added to the Tao of programming.

~~~
wlievens
Programming?

