The document discusses the engineering dilemma faced by startups: whether to build products for immediate traction or for long-term scalability. It emphasizes that successful platforms initially focused on simplicity and precise product functions rather than scale, advocating for building with precision, speed, and quality. The key takeaway is to prioritize creating a product that gains users quickly rather than one that's overly complex and underused.

1. You Are Not Google, TikTok or Instagram (Yet)
The Engineering
Startup Dilemma:
Build it the “right way”
now, or later?

2. We see stories like this
all the time:

4. It’s inspiring!
But something gets lost in
the headlines:
Success started small & with
product focus

5. The most popular platforms didn’t start with
scale
(HINT: They started with simple and precise
product focus)

6. INSTAGRAM
iOS only for the first X million
users
You couldn’t zoom in on
pictures
Square pictures only

7. FACEBOOK
Colleges only
One profile picture.
No albums or other
pictures allowed
There wasn’t a “wall”

8. TWITTER
140 characters for a
decade.
No ability to do “tweet
storms”
No threaded replies.
Twitter in March 2006, used as an
internal service for Odeo employees
[https://www.firstversions.com/2015/07/twitter.html]

9. Companies tend to build products
to plan for scale instead of product
planning for quality and traction
Wrong
Right

10. Wrong Question: Can our
product scale to 1M Users?
Right Question: How do I
build a product that gets to
1M users quickly?

11. THE ENGINEERING DILEMMA
Build it the “right way” now, which
will take longer, but will save us
time later
Or
Focus on “right now”, which will
help us get to market faster, but will
cause issues later.

12. THE ANSWER IS:

13. Build for precision,
traction and speed, not
scale

14. Keep the end goal in mind.

15. A beautiful, well-engineered
product with the latest
technology, that nobody
uses, is a failure.

16. Does the product do what it’s
supposed to do?
Is the product reliable?
Are more people using the product
than the week before

17. Code precisely.

18. Build exactly what’s needed in the best
way you can.
Remember: MORE CODE = MORE WORK

19. Build QA into everything
Our engineering teams place a
huge emphasis on QA & Test
Planning as part of our Agile
sprints.

20. Technology debt is OK --
within reason
Build for speed and quality
(even if it’s not the most
optimized long-term
technical path)

21. Technology doesn’t solve
everything (Yes, even with
Artificial Intelligence)