“Move Fast and Break Things” … Why this Classic Startup Advice Hurts Founders More Than It Helps

This classic phrase, made famous by Zuckerberg at Facebook and adopted by an entire generation of startups, no longer is relevant.

For over a decade, founders have been taking this to heart and embracing an approach to product development where you move fast, test lots of things, and learn from your mistakes.

Don’t get me wrong, quick feedback loops are critical to successful product development, especially for early to growth stage startups. However, we have seen so many founders throughout the years take a risky approach to early development because of this advice. For a decade plus, it was easy to take a “growth at all cost” mentality, breaking things and learning along the way, all because many startups could continually increase their runway through venture fundraising.

In today’s market where the time between fundraising rounds is increasing, startups need to have better cash flow in order to achieve the same levels of runway that were more readily obtainable previously.

Learning from mistakes or market shifts is critical to the success of a startup.

Our point here is that in today’s market, founders get less chances to learn, adapt, and pivot as runway of early/growth stage startups shrinks. What this means is that if a founder has less chances to find product market fit, they better make sure that every one counts.

At Peak Product Group, we liken this to a blindfolded game of darts. If I were to blindfold you and give you ten tries to hit a dartboard across the pub, because you have many chances the odds of hitting that board aren’t too bad.

But the days of getting a plethora of chances are gone. Today, I might blind fold you but only hand you three darts. Now your odds of hitting that dart board plummet.

Developing a robust yet adaptable product strategy is akin to taking the blindfold off.

Yes you might still only have 3 attempts to hit the board but without the blindfold, your odds now shoot back up again.

This is what we see with founders who spend the time and effort to develop their product strategy from the get go. They still have less chances to hit the board (i.e. find product market fit) but with a strategy that guides them and adapts with each miss, they can make each attempt count much more.

The misconception we see is that many founders think they either cannot afford to slow down and think about strategy, or are too early in their product journey to do so.

Comprehensive Doesn't Always Equal Slow.

We believe that developing robust strategy doesn't have to take months on end. Our approach at Peak Product Group to 0-1 strategy is “hypothesize in hours and evolve over time”. This might be easier said than done for many founders who haven’t taken this approach in the past but is something that we have seen first hand improve the chance of success of companies time and time again.