Connection over perfection

Validating products before creating them

If I waited for perfection…I would never write a word.

• Margaret Atwood

There’s currently a huge wave of people validating ideas quickly, without even having the product built.

This is made especially easy if you already have an audience.

You can just toss a ‘Buy’ button on a page somewhere, share it with your audience, and see if anyone bites.

If they don’t, you move on. If they do, you build it.

This is a major improvement in efficiency over how launching products has traditionally been done.

There are countless examples of startups and apps that were built over many months or years, only to be launched to crickets.

In the case of a startup or company with a lot of funding, or an existing market, this build-big-first approach can make sense.

For us bootstrappers, it almost never does. Yet, we can feel like if we get our product perfect right out of the gates that we’ll increase our chances of success. Or that if we get all the development out of the way now we’ll be able to focus on other areas, or just sip a beverage on the beach.

Striving for perfection holds us back. Aim for connection.

But the reality is, perfection doesn’t exist, and the idea of perfection is different in everyone’s eyes anyhow.

Our goal with our businesses is not to create perfection, but connection.

Specifically, connection with our customers.

If we can do that, we will be solving their problems in a big way.

And the only way to create connection with our customers is to be including them from the beginning, listening to them, learning from them, letting them guide our path.

What I love about this, and many other key aspects of building a successful business, is the same concepts apply to life.

Your best friends are not your best friends because they’re perfect, but because you feel a deep sense of connection with them.

Your favorite products are not perfect, but you feel a sense of connection with them.

I doubt anyone would say the iPhone is perfect, yet I’ve rarely heard anyone complain about one, and you’ll see them everywhere you go in the world.

This is so because people feel connected to them, they don’t require an instruction manual, and they work so intuitively that users rarely have to fight them.

When we experience a beautifully executed product or application, it’s a sign of the creator building a deep connection with the users.

This doesn’t happen overnight, and it doesn’t happen in a vacuum.

Prioritize connection over perfection, and over time you’ll get as close to perfection, in the eyes of your customers, and you can get.