

Premature optimization - jordn
http://blog.samaltman.com/premature-optimization

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skore
This is proper advice and if you're in a position to adhere to it, do.

However, most of the time, you are more likely in a position where you try to
convince somebody (who contracts you to do something for him) to adhere to it.
My pet peeve is signup forms[0]. Trying to convince people that their
_product_ is the thing to obsess about seems straight forward. But that's also
their most sensitive spot, psychologically. So most likely, they're projecting
all of their efforts _around_ precisely that part and any attempt to change
that is met with incredible resistance.

I have yet to see a case where the words "we're loosing business, because" is
followed by "people don't need or want what we offer". In fact, if I were to
check, I'm pretty sure that in every single instance of "loosing business,
because" a quick glance at the site in question would result in thinking
"well, because who would want _that_?".

[0] <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3809186>

From that comment: "If your website gives out free gourmet food and massages,
you can literally require people to fill out ten page forms and ask for
confirmation via standard mail - your signup form will still convert users
like crazy. At the opposite end of that scale, there are forms like the recent
April Fools joke 'Google Nigeria' - the simplest possible form: Enter your
Credit Card details and be done."

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victorology
Definitely agree with this. Currently, I am running a side project with a
friend (which we hope to turn into a company). On our roadmap, we have
Product/Market Fit and after that, Product Optimization.

We have released mobile apps for iOS and Android but they are 100% mobile web
views. We want to be able to prototype quickly and figure using web views is
the best way to do this (no approval waits, cross platform). Registration
conversion rates are bad and the UX is what you get with a non-optimized
mobile web view.

Despite that, the data we are gathering from initial testing is valuable.
We've been able to gather that users find the base product interesting but our
engagement at the end of the funnel is not as high as we like.

For us, we consider moving from web to native would be the highest form of
optimization but we want to get the product right first.

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carterschonwald
That said, there are some problem domains where better optimization is the
only way to differentiate. Eg, I'm a short span away from releasing version 0
of Wellposed's numerical linear algebra product/library, and this is a product
where if your code isn't at least as fast and usable as the alternatives, no
one cares.

Thankfully My code seems to be >10x faster on the problems that matter, and
trending to be substantially more extensible and usable than alternatives.

If "optimization" of some sort isn't fundamental to your business, you don't
have a real business or value prop for someone.

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pizza
OP is talking about the completeness-type of optimization, whereas you're
talking about the effectiveness-type of optimization; OP touches upon this:

> "This is great, but only if the business [in your case, library] is already
> working."

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carterschonwald
in my case... theres no business without optimization :)

but I suppose you're right and I'm being a tad literal! Comes with having
optimization on the brain all day1

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hoi
I Only semi-agree.

To truly understand if your product has hit the mark, you need to have the
metrics/analytics to be able to assess those factors, look for tipping points,
know what to remove etc. Sure, don't do premature micro optimization.. but
massive optimization to get product market fit is still a form of optimization
that needs to be done, for example, A/B testing different landing pages to
discover what people are actually looking for, each page with different
subsets of 'features'.

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jonathanjaeger
It takes a lot of data to get good A/B test results and you can't run all
these tests at the same time and in parallel. A lot of newer startups simply
don't have the traffic or data available to optimize like crazy. I think the
key is just to focus on your core metrics, like engagement for a consumer
product or whatever your metric is for a B2B company (contracts, revenue,
etc.).

~~~
usujason
I've worked with many startups to help them build a culture of data-driven
decision making and I'll say from my experience that you don't need massive
data to run highly valuable A/B tests. Also, with proper segmentation
techniques, you can run many tests in parallel.

~~~
jonathanjaeger
Fair enough. My experience is more on A/B testing high trafficked paid lead
gen pages, and I understand you can still make conclusions with less data
(doesn't need to be massive). But I do agree with the author of the original
post that it can be easy to worry about all these different A/B tests that
aren't that illuminating in the grand scheme of things when you haven't even
got a solid product.

~~~
usujason
Yep, we agree there, the advice of the author is spot on. I think too many
startups, and large companies for that matter, think optimization is going to
fix all the problems that are inherent in their product/business by just
blindly slaping optimization vendor A's tags on the site and money just falls
from the sky. Just doesn't happen like that.

