Should companies be built from a founder's strong vision (like a Hollywood film) rather than iteratively through customer feedback and A/B testing?

Jeremy Liew · Feb 24, 2021

The most important thing about Evan Spiegel as a leader is not what has changed but what has stayed constant: his ability to reason about product from first principles rather than iterating on current best practices

Product management accumulates 'best practices' so every product becomes an iteration on what came before, which leads teams to local maxima and causes them to miss global maxima; Evan looks at things with fresh eyes instead

25:19 20VC: The Snapchat Memo: Lightspeed's Jeremy Liew on The 4 Key Elements To Consider When Evaluating A Consumer Social Product, What is Good/Great/World Class For Retention, Usage and Downloads in Consumer Social Today & The Core Insight Development of Eva

Delian Asparouhov · Jul 29, 2024

Customer-feedback-driven company building works only for marginal improvements in small markets, not for category-defining companies, which are built from a founder's strong vision of the future.

Musk didn't survey consumers about electric vehicles or ask NASA if it wanted cheaper rockets; Jobs didn't ask for feedback on the iPhone; Jensen Huang didn't ask whether people wanted parallel-compute GPUs — yet these are the top companies on the Nasdaq.

Scope: concedes it is a reasonable approach for small SaaS businesses, e.g. workflow software for plumbers

20:17 20VC: Twitter's Most Controversial VC Delian Asparouhov on Inside the Walls of Founders Fund: What the World Does Not See | Why Western Europe Will Be Like the Third World | Why SaaS as an Industry Might Be Dead

Imran Khan · Aug 26, 2024

Evan Spiegel's edge is an unusually deep understanding of how Snap's users actually use the product, which let him back decisions like Lenses, Maps and Stories that finance people and observers doubted

He predicted exactly how consumers would use products the rest of the team couldn't justify on financial grounds

50:07 20VC: Why the IPO Market is not Closed | Why Revenue Multiples are BS and Founders Need to Change | Advice From Jack Ma, Jamie Dimon and Evan Spiegel | Lessons from Taking Snap & Alibaba Public with Imran Khan

Martin Casado · Dec 5, 2022

Founders in early categories should lock themselves away for several days to write down a lucid vision of why the company matters and what the future looks like, then use it to drive everything in the company

He endorses McJanet's and Mulaney's practice as exactly right; it becomes the driver of recruiting, culture, sales, marketing and analyst work

24:29 Founders should isolate themselves to write a lucid vision document that drives recruiting culture and sales

Delian Asparouhov · Jul 29, 2024

Companies should be built like Hollywood films: start from a story you strongly believe in, then cast the specific best-suited cofounders for each major risk, rather than A/B testing your way toward a vision.

The best studios don't A/B test into a film — writers commit to a script, cast the obvious right lead, and fully produce it; this was how Keith built the early days of Opendoor.

18:13 Cast cofounders around a strong vision like a hollywood film not ab testing