The following post first appeared on LinkedIn
If you want to build a venture-scale software company, you have to build a product development engine that is fast, efficient, and reliable.
Ship early. Ship often. Ship Quality.
At , most of my early mistakes - and I made a lot - were around product. It took us a while to build a high-performing product development engine, but it was like magic when we did. Even below $1m in ARR, we were shipping high-quality code weekly. And eventually, that became daily. With almost no bugs.
Our product development and engineering teams worked well together and were obsessed with getting better. They always had the highest employee net promoter scores and the lowest attrition in the company. That was a winning team. They liked each other. They engaged in productive debate. They were selective about who they let onto the team. There was no drama. And they shipped a ton of super high quality code.
Most software companies - especially vertical software companies - are going to have to grow their total addressable markets (TAM) over time. That is usually going to happen through building and selling multiple products.
At CampusLogic, I always felt the scarcity of TAM but I knew that we could dramatically grow our TAM by building a suite of products. Including a couple of products we acquired and integrated, we shipped seven products in seven years between 2014 and 2020.
If you are average at building and shipping one product, you are certainly going to be below average with multiple products. So if you are committed to building a venture-scale software company, commit to building a fast, efficient, and high-quality product development engine now.
If you are a software company, you should be great at building software. It should be your core competency. Shipping flawless code on the regular should be a fundamental part of your company's identity.
