Lenny Rachitsky: observation

Transcript context

…I think they are. I think that's a whole nother podcast on why that is. But let's leave that., So Hila is right. So when she started in 2019, a couple months after me, we were very much focused on a breadth over depth. And that was so we could build out what is the DevSecOps platform. The only way that we could truly help people from a platform strategy was to be touching the different parts of the DevSecOps lifecycle or the SDLC, depending on how you look at it. Now, last year we made the conscious decision to start to pivot to depth over breadth. And that's because we have a very broad platform today. We are touching everything from business continuity planning and OKRs to enterprise agile planning and team planning to coding, deploying, securing, monitoring, the entire SDLC. And we now know there's key areas where we need to be really deep to help companies accelerate delivering software. And so in those key areas, they are source code management. The things around that like code review, ID experience, remote development, CICD, security and governance, planning and AI, we know of those are really deep. The things that aren't as deep around them, we'll get that a rising tide of solve boats effect. And so we've pivoted in those queries now be depth over breadth. That's awesome. It's interesting. So basically, to create a wedge and gain traction, sounds like initially let's just do a lot of things but not be the best. And now that you're doing great and have all these products, the strategy has shifted to going deep. This is a question a lot of founders always face. Should we go wide? Should we go deep? I know you weren't there at the beginning, but just I guess do you have any thoughts or insights from when it makes sense to go wide versus when it makes sense to focus? Because usually the advice is just do one thing really great and that's the only way to win. And it sounds like clearly this is an opposite approach here. And for those who aren't as familiar with GitLab as I know you are, we are the leader in our space. We are the DevSecOps platform. Not just us calling that, but user reviews, analysts like Gardner and Forrester are calling that out. And so what for us it was that I think when you're going really wide, you're trying to find your niche and what you're going to be really good at and what you can differentiate on. And for us what that was is where are the key areas that we can truly help someone accelerate delivering software. And over the course of those years, you're right, we were still in a fast growth period when I started and I was part of that breadth first when I started in 2019. But we found those key areas that we know if they are truly deep, they bridge to the other area that's deep and maybe some of those areas don't have to be as deep as the things around them. And so good example is we started adding ModelOps functionality to GitLab in 2020. We focused heavily on adding depth to MLOps, which is just one of the three pillars of that. And we know that DataOps will probably be needed at some point, but if we have a nice integration with DataOps platforms, you can actually do all your MLOps work in GitLab and be successful at it with a lightweight connector or component that's there. And so that's what we've done, is we've started really investing deep in those key areas knowing that it's going to help those areas that we aren't investing necessarily as much in be still good enough. And touch on what you were touching on earlier about the getting to that good enough level.…

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