Building the Crash career launch platform is a lot of fun. It’s also super hard.
The hardest part isn’t so much figuring out what to build to solve users pain points and help them launch careers, though that is a challenge. The hardest part isn’t building the things we come up with either (especially for me, since the engineering team does most of that;-).
The hardest part is committing to NOT build a whole bunch of awesome fun stuff we want to make and that some customers would probably really like.
Choosing those “not yet” items, and sticking to the stuff we know we need more is way harder than you’d think. None of the trade-offs are clear cut. Lack of a super slick and sexy new feature might not impede customers from accomplishing their goals, while a really boring and tiny bug might. And in most cases, you won’t know if either do or don’t!
Sure, you try to be informed by the data, but early on, data is fairly thin, and choosing what to measure, how to measure, and to put in the time to create the ability to measure is not a data based decision, but a point of view, philosophy, gut decision. Plus data is useless without a theoretical lens through which to interpret it.
So you have to do a lot of thinking. Then clinch your teeth and say no to all the awesome stuff you want (and may even need…but who knows?)
I don’t imagine this gets any easier with more resources. It just levels up the awesomeness of the stuff you have to say no to.
Scarcity is a pain in the ass. It’s also the sole source of creative innovation, so there’s that.