Hello!

I'm waiting for the finished manuscript of Kill the HiPPO to go through "copy editing" - the process where a professional editor makes sure my text is consistent, accurate, and well-structured.

Meanwhile I've been mulling over the fact that of the 10 founders we interviewed, 9 of them told a similar story about the early days: "We built too many features". I'm a founder myself, I put snippets of my own story into the book, and I also built too many features in the early days. So let's say, 10 out of 11 are guilty of this.

The details varied a bit, but at heart it was the same: we were so excited to actually have real feedback from paying customers, and so scared of losing whatever early revenue we had, we jumped into doing whatever they asked. We wanted to pour fertiliser wherever we saw signs of life.

But was this really a mistake?

No, it was not. In fact, I think it is almost unavoidable.

The main reason: survivorship bias. We are only looking at the stories of founders whose software products are mature and profitable. For each product that makes it to that stage, perhaps 20 don't make it, and get shut down - or 'sunsetted' in a delightfully awful piece of industry jargon.

All of our products were unlikely to succeed. Initially we didn't know exactly who the ideal customer was. We didn't know what features would be the right ones. We didn't know what to charge. We didn't even know what how our H1 should read on our website.

Really, we didn't know much at all. We had little data, but we still needed to make important decisions.

The founders we interviewed succeeded despite the odds being against them. It's easy to look back 10 years after launching, from the perspective of success, and say "we built too many features". But look at it again from the other end, from the beginning where everything is unknown, and I'd say you did the right thing.

Until next time,

Steve
​​​killthehippo.com​​

PS: a reminder that I'm aiming to have Kill the HiPPO published by the end of March, 2026. 🤞🤞