Recently, I started building an app, Gurgeh. Every week I learn something new (this is a common feeling among founders). So I decided to share my weekly lessons in the hopes that (1) I don’t forget them and (2) they help you on your own journey.
One cool thing about studying computer science is how universal the lessons are. You can apply them to all sorts of areas in life.
Today’s post is a great example of that (and if you want more examples, this book is chock-full of them).
So let’s dive in.
In computer science, an iterative strategy involves repeating a process until a condition is met (if you code, you’ve done this with for and while loops).
Each “repetition of the process” is called an iteration.
In other words, you (1) have a goal, (2) try a strategy to achieve it, and (3) if you didn’t achieve it, repeat step 2 with a different strategy (this is an iteration) until you achieve it.
Why am I mentioning this? Because applying this strategy to startups (especially software startups) is key to building something people want.
In fact, here’s how Chamath Palihapitiya explained Facebook’s success in this interview with Kara Swisher.
“Facebook just created itself… That’s not true. It was iterated to perfection.” — Chamath Palihapitiya
How? Let’s look at one example:
Around 2006 (2007?), Facebook had a goal (this is ste): get user data from external websites and make it useful.
That’s step 1.
Then came step 2, they tried a strategy to achieve that goal. This strategy was Beacon.
That strategy didn’t work. Beacon was a big mistake.
Did they stop there? Nope. This is where step 3 comes in! They iterated (in other words they tried a different strategy to achieve the same goal).
This strategy was Connect. And it worked because Connect was a huge, huge success.
Goal achieved.
And this isn’t the only example! Facebook has tons of stories like this (and so does every successful startup).
But there is one constant, their use of the iterative strategy.
As Chamath said, Facebook iterated to perfection.
“Launch fast and iterate. It’s a big mistake to treat a startup as if it were merely a matter of implementing some brilliant initial idea.” — Paul Graham
Sidenote: Yes, hardware companies do this too (iPhones still get better every year). It’s just a glacial pace compared to software.
So if you ask me what am I doing with Gurgeh, I will answer that I’m “talking to users, iterating, talking to users, iterating, talking to users, iterating…”
The app gets better every week. And the goal is to iterate to perfection.
How will I know I achieved it? Once I see people telling all their friends about Gurgeh (although if you’ve done this already, thanks!).
But more about that in a future post 🙂
And that’s it for today!
See you next week.
Be well.
R
Thanks for reading! 😊 If you enjoyed it, test how many times can you hit 👏 in 5 seconds. It’s great cardio for your fingers AND will help other people see the story.
Startup Lesson #5: Iterate to perfection was originally published in The Mission on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
Source: The Mission
