Lenny Rachitsky: belief

Transcript context

…arginal costs. The cost of revenue is incredibly low, et cetera, et cetera. So we have a product that everyone in the world uses, where they're all identical, essentially, interchangeable commodities. And if you can get people to use it, you're going to print money. So, the attributes of that business and that product category mean, you have to win on how much do people love your product and feel an emotional connection to it, and choose your brand, your product over the other, almost not rationally, but emotionally. And so, if you tie that back to everything I've said before, bingo! That is what we want to work on. That's what we want. We want to create emotional connection with people. We're creating that emotional connection with as many people as possible and delighting them with surprises and animations, is the way you win. It's not romantic, it is practical. In many ways it's capitalistic. This is how we win this market if you want to think about it that way. So, the reason I hesitate to answer your question directly is, I don't think that applies to every category of software. And to be totally honest, I don't know enough about the ticketing space or the calendaring space or the whatever other space to know, honestly, off the cuff, if that approach is good for those industries. As a human being, at the other end, I'm really grateful that they picked some reason to do it, whether or not it is part of their business strategy or not. It's a really wonderful trend as a human at the other end that cares about feelings. But I would say, we actually think about it not as a, "We're focusing on the user experience over revenue or growth." We, in fact, picked a category of software we're focusing on brand and user experience is how you get growth and revenue. And, because we knew that this is who we are, and if we were building cybersecurity software that you sell to government agencies, they are not going to give a shit about rounded edges, or what color the button is, or how surprised you feel with every member update. So, we didn't build cybersecurity software to sell to the government. So, I hope that more people build things at the craft bar of something like Linear, but that's how we think about it, is less of a "this versus that," and more "could we pick something we're going to work on, where that's how you win." I think that's a really powerful insight, that for consumer software especially, and for commoditized consumer software especially, experience is a differentiator. You need to give people a reason to even try it, and then end up sticking with it when there's awesome alternatives. And so, just an obsession with the experience is a really smart strategy. If you get that right, people use it and continue to use it and you win. I've seen this with a lot of ... And COVID is, I'm sure everyone listening, has a lot of the remote-work collaboration tools. A lot of them obsess, to their credit, over really interesting design details and product feature concepts that were imaginative and brought people together in new ways. And then the latency of the video of the audio audio was horrible, because they relied on some third-party API that was significantly worse than Zoom. And so, that's a great example where in that market, that category software, you better nail latency. I think a great example of this ... One of my favorite products these days, but past years is Tuple. It's ostensibly a paired programming tool that just lives in your menu bar. I'm not paired program with anyone. It is the fastest way to talk to someone at your company. And they have an unbelievably simple user experience. The designer, based in Lyon, France, is incredible. It's a beautifully designed product. And it is the best audio quality I have ever experienced in a communication tool. Better than Zoom. So, that exact same product with all their craft details, sand latency, not going to do it. But also Tuple wouldn't have beat a lot of the other competitors for me if it wasn't unbelievably beautiful and easy and simple to use as well. So again, I think it's like, what are the attributes you need to win and picking a market that the ones that you want to excel at and work on, are key to that.…

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