A few weeks ago I was at our company meetup in Montreal, on stage in a big room in front of everyone, sharing progress on two brand new products in development.
We went one at a time. First Product 1 for a half hour, then Product 2. The lead designers for each product were driving, and I was talking. The products projected on a big screen behind us, in front of everyone else.
As I walked through the products, I kept citing use cases. I cited ours — after all, we were building these products for us, as we always do — but then I shared a bunch of hypotheticals. “Imagine...” “Someone could...”
As I was saying this, I was recoiling inside. But I went through with it as the show must go on. Perhaps it was a touch of insecurity given how early along we were with each product. I felt like I had to bolster them somehow. And there’s no better way to prop something up in the moment than blathering on about all the imaginary things it can do for all the imaginary people!
The demos went well, but a few days post meetup I wrote up an internal long-form announcement in our “HQ” project in Basecamp. The HQ is essentially our intranet, and it’s where we post announcements that go out to everyone in the company. We use it in lieu of email, which is a terrible way to make private announcements.
Essentially I admitted I regretted sharing all these alternate use cases. They were a distraction, blurred vision. The misdirection was a mistake.
Then I said:
We went one at a time. First Product 1 for a half hour, then Product 2. The lead designers for each product were driving, and I was talking. The products projected on a big screen behind us, in front of everyone else.
As I walked through the products, I kept citing use cases. I cited ours — after all, we were building these products for us, as we always do — but then I shared a bunch of hypotheticals. “Imagine...” “Someone could...”
As I was saying this, I was recoiling inside. But I went through with it as the show must go on. Perhaps it was a touch of insecurity given how early along we were with each product. I felt like I had to bolster them somehow. And there’s no better way to prop something up in the moment than blathering on about all the imaginary things it can do for all the imaginary people!
The demos went well, but a few days post meetup I wrote up an internal long-form announcement in our “HQ” project in Basecamp. The HQ is essentially our intranet, and it’s where we post announcements that go out to everyone in the company. We use it in lieu of email, which is a terrible way to make private announcements.
Essentially I admitted I regretted sharing all these alternate use cases. They were a distraction, blurred vision. The misdirection was a mistake.
Then I said:
“And with that, I want to remind myself, and everyone else, that we should be focused on building products for ourselves first. v1 is for us. Others will find alternative uses for products we build, just as they have with Basecamp. And we may suggest alternative uses to expand people's imaginations, and the market for the products. But every feature in v1 of Basecamp existed because we needed it. Nothing was imagined for anyone else. Over the years we've of course made changes to products to adapt to the needs of customers, while not straying too far from home. That's good. But v1 is sacred to us.”
And that’s the key, really. v1 is for us. No one else. Others will use it, many will resonate with it, but ultimately, v1 is ours. It’s sacred ground. There’s an eternity to change, tweak, modify, grow, expand, and adjust for everyone else, but there’s only a fixed amount of time to make that perfect version 1 for us. To tie the knot on the reason we made the thing on the first place: Because *we* needed it, because *we* wanted it.
We don’t do MVPs here. I don’t believe in MVPs. I think they’re the lowest of the lowest bar, an insult to product development in general. What’s less inspiring than something that’s Minimally Viable? We do what I call MPV1s. Maximally Proud Version 1s. Version 1 won’t be everything to everyone, but it’ll be everything to us. Just what we need, and nothing more. And we’ll be proud of every part of it — and also what it isn’t, yet.
Version 1 is all about being selfish. You’ll make a better product that way. For you, and, ultimately, for them too.
-Jason