There are no perfect products. Only good and bad tradeoffs.
I wanted to kick off 2024 with a topic that comes up often when I talk to junior PMs and product builders in general on aspiring for the perfect product. Here are some of the lessons I have learned over the years.
An Amazonian leadership principle printed on the walls of the Day One building in Seattle
Building products is hard. Building a perfect product is impossible. But building the best product for a vast number of satisfied customers is indeed possible.
There is no such thing as a perfect product. The best products are the ones which make the right tradeoffs.
Good intentions are useful. Great execution is priceless.
Businesses have to make tradeoffs. Customers are willing to make some tradeoffs. The best products find this intersection and the optimal balance between the right business and customer tradeoffs.
The best tradeoffs are ones where the user needs are prioritized to achieve product market fit before business tradeoffs are made. E.g. Apple established the product and experience quality of the iPhone before making business tradeoffs like removing the inbox charger or headphone jack. Users respond better to business tradeoffs when are invested in the platform.
The best tradeoffs are the ones that a majority of users never realized were made.
The worst product decisions are the ones that were not tradeoffs but felt like one to the user.
Tradeoffs are never permanent. A bad tradeoff in one generation of product can be fixed with the next generation. But in long gestating programs, tradeoffs that looked good while being made early in development can look terrible when the product ships due to shifting table stakes.
There is no one way to know how to make the right tradeoffs. A mix of research, product intuition, experience, business track record and reputation and platform stickiness helps improve the odds. But even with all of those in place, you can make the wrong tradeoffs. There is an element of luck and timing that goes with all of the above.
You only learn by shipping. There is a point of time where polishing yields diminishing returns and there is much more that can be learnt by just shipping and iterating fast.
Happy New Year and hope you found these tips useful in your journey to build great products.