Building for scale and building for viability are different.

· Bits and Bobs 7/7/25
  • Building for scale and building for viability are different.
    • Imagine working at a company where on day 1 of a product you can expect 50M users.
    • You have to think about every little detail before building it.
      • In that environment product discovery is about talking and planning.
      • Writing down plans so they can be critiqued and collaborated on is a critical step in the process.
    • But in most contexts, the 0-1 phase has very little usage.
      • Product discovery there is about experimenting and surfing through the problem domain fluidly.
      • It's all about getting something concrete into contact with real people as quickly as possible to iterate.
      • In that environment, writing down things slows down the discovery process significantly.