product

“I must admit that I think that the most important thing is the product.”

“All we had was this product that had cost about fifteen million dollars to build, and we had been lucky enough to buy it for a dollar”

“Stop building a startup and just build a product. So instead of worrying about all of the paraphernalia that comes with building a startup, just focus on the product that you want to build and the customers that might want that product. So what that means is, …”

“You gotta have product. A product can be mock-ups and like, you know, LOIs from customers. A product can be an actual, you know, working prototype. It's gotta be something. You gotta, if you're not capable of doing that, you're not capable of, you know, you sh…”

“If you make a really awesome product, you'll get found out by the press because we can't ignore it. And if you make a bad product, You'll get found out by your customers or users, regardless of how much publicity you've gone out.”

“Product is probably the last thing I worry about when I think about product, especially at the seed stage or what the early vision of a product is. That helps you understand how the team thinks about the space as opposed to sort of being, you know, the thing y…”

“And so you really need to make a decision when investing, assuming that, that you're not going to be able to kind of work day in, day out and help them build the product. Do you still believe that they can get there right with you as a mentor coach, not you as…”

“I think in the last five to eight years, because of many of the reasons we discussed earlier, is distribution has been available through the app store, and so a lot of power has moved to product. I think it is now moving back to distribution,”

“A very bad word is a product that no one likes. That one I would stay away from. But when it feels like users are pulling the product out of the company, they're figuring out how to use it even though it's hard and broken because they just like it so much. Tha…”

“The second thing that you want to think about from an org structure perspective is tie-breaking. Where do you want the decisions to be made? So for example, if you want decisions between product and engineering to be made by you, then both functions should rep…”

“Building a great product is important, but if you don't have a strong growth loop for it doesn't matter because you can't scale the product.”

“If it doesn't have its own momentum as a feature or product, and if you find yourself just constantly trying to push a nudge and you can't get customers to stick to it, that's generally a sign that as a feature or product, it's like, it's not working.”

“Not all the time, but usually, you know, it's best for a CEO of an internet company to have been out of product, you know, or being a founder is almost the same thing.”

“It's not the best product that wins, it's the best distribution that wins, and that the best distribution creates a feedback cycle that allows you to have the best product over time, but distribution wins over product in the early days.”

“I typically say this work better under product. I think many sustainable growth programs require with engineering and product discipline. Marketing really only makes sense for e-commerce companies where the product is like simple and linear. You're likely goin…”

“If the practice of growth is successful, it should eventually abstract itself away and just be how product and marketing are run.”

“From a tech perspective, Israel is really good at tech. It's not as good in product.”

“Now, if you take it all the way back to a startup, Or a young company, then yes, I will be very worried if the founder is not intimately involved in the product, either as the head of product or playing a key role in shaping the product, because ultimately it …”

“If your product becomes everything to everyone, you lose the fanatics. But your fanatics are the ones that talk about it in bars. Bring their friends in, have the viral coefficients and stuff, but they're also the ones that push you to do unimaginable things, …”

“I've seen that, you know, the board of directors is saying this person stinks and they don't. It's more that the founders aren't listening to customers. They're not building the right product.”

“I try to have a growth team in marketing that focuses mostly on driving activated signups. And I try to get a growth team in product as focus is mostly on retention and conversion.”

“In technology companies, and this might be controversial because like, you know, this is like putting aside like all the other things that make these companies go. There is product. And then there is sales. Like, what drives technology companies and most busin…”

“But you really actually need product to live in the weeds with operations and intimately understand the challenges and the experiences and the frictions and the deficiencies.”

“Operations. The speed and cadence and types of problem solving is, is, is very, very different. And so it can be very challenging to all speak the same language on things that have a product or technical solution versus an ops based solution.”

“But most of the value has to be in the products. Like, you know, we don't build infrastructure just for the sake of infrastructure. Like we build infrastructure so people can make product.”

“Ironically, as a brand person, I would say products more important than brand right now. Products all that matters actually brand secondary.”

“It's not that okay in product by the way, but in marketing it's fine because let's say that this booth would have been the weirdest thing ever. Okay. I would have never done it again. And people would have rolled their eyes at me, but there's no harm there for…”

“There's all these interesting debates right now about like, Roles collapsing and product and marketing and so on. And I just really don't see these things as separate. I see product and marketing and, you know, it's the same thing.”

“So I think that the right investor can be a catalyst, but I don't think that you can take a product that would not otherwise be the winner and anoint them the winner.”

“Every category that I know of outside of engineering and product is at existential risk of shrinking seats.”

“What becomes more important is your product as a channel, where you actually earn that trust that drives that word of mouth, that drives that likability, and what becomes less important is something across marketing, sales, like more old traditional techniques…”

“So I think I ultimately, my core investing thesis is that if there is not remarkable product, all the go-to marketing distribution in the world will not save you.”

“I think you know, products will get enormously cheap or purchasing power is going to go up like crazy.”

“The needs of product and companies are extremely divergent unless you're taking a perspective three years out, at which point they kind of become to come to the same point and actually augment each other.”