Pursuit of Perfection
October 6th, 2010 • dee studio (486j)
Last week Hugo posed a question that was along these lines:
“How do I know when to stop iterating a physical product. When do I release it?”
Immediately I remembered Guy Kawasaki’s The Art of the Start (great book). Guy suggests that you get the product immediately to market, then fix, ship, fix, ship.
Seth Godin often encourages people to ship, ship, ship. Fail often, learn, and keep shipping.
Do it, do it better. Iterate, critique, iterate.
The only way to know if what you are doing is working is to get it out there. In the long run this process is more important than just a great first version. Imagine how long it would have taken Apple to come up with its current line of MacBooks, without having released the previous editions?
Interestingly enough, we spend most of our school lives going all-in on all of our assignments. There is no room for this process, just achieve perfection by the deadline.
Bonus cookie
Also from The Art of the Start: Guy’s 10/20/30 rule for presentations. Simply:
10 slides
20 minutes
30 point font
This is specifically for VC pitches, but it works basically everywhere. For everyone who thinks 8 slides is not enough for 3 minutes, Guy thinks you only need 2, maximum.
To help get you there
Garr Reynold’s Presentation Zen