On the Stockdale Paradox and Optimists
I’ve been listening to the Startup Success 2006 video for the last 45 minutes and it’s really a great listen for anyone in startup land. One particular bit by Joe Kraus of JotSpot. He’s talking about James Stockdale, a war verteran apparently held as a prisoner of war longer than anyone else:
"You can never stop believing that what you are doing is going to be the most successful thing you can make it. But every day you have to face the hard, cold reality of what's right in front of you. And you can't let your sense of optimism force you into denial about the facts on the ground."I've been having more reality to deal with lately than I would prefer :) but what can you do. We've reached on of these impasses at the moment. We've been gearing up for a launch in the next 10 days - it was supposed to happen this week but we had some serious setbacks with design (it's moving along swimmingly now).
Unfortunately, you’ve got to listen to your team as well. Last night I had a conversation with my lead developer on Product 1 (soon to be announced). While we’ve written a tremendous amount of code and are doing some things that no one hasn’t done - it’s just not right, he’s not comfortable yet. Despite a growing sense of pressure from the forces that be, we’ve got one chance to launch and we’re going to wait to make sure we do it right.
Interestingly in this same video, Reid Hoffman makes the remark - “if you’re not embarrassed when your product goes live, you’ve waited too long”.  I totally agree - we’re not seeking perfection. What we are seeking, however, is the right mix of features that makes our offering compelling. Stowe’s touched on this recently as well:
Perhaps the number one argument I have with my start-up clients is about "how much is enough to get out the door in release 1.0?" I have had several clients in recent months who have released products that I believed lacked the minimum feature set needed to a/ capture attention of the digerati, but even worse b/ failed to have enough in them to allow viral uptake: the social dimension was lacking.Balance is a bitch.Source: /Message, “Learning From The Kiko Crash: Too Little, Too Late”