The Product Heist

super{set} is unabashedly all about building great products. We have to be: all the low-hanging fruit has been plucked, and the easy things in tech have all been done before. It used to be a couple of engineers (or even a lone engineer), a bunch of functional and technical specs, and six months later you’ve built something. Doesn’t work that way anymore. The ecosystems, the platforms, and the problems to be solved are much more complex - and on top of this, the speed at which product has to be built and evolve has never been faster. The paradox is that even while the founder and the product team have to be on a swivel, moving at light speed, organized thinking and careful planning have never been more critical.

Tom and Vivek describe how building the best product is like planning the perfect heist. Like Danny Ocean, it always pays off to spend the time upfront to plan every move and contingency carefully. It’s not about building cool tech for the sake of cool tech: always keep the big prize in mind. To get into the Casino, you need an insertion product - something perfectly timed for the market and your first customers. And you need to identify the perfect customer - the guy on the inside - to make it happen. Finally, to drill inside the safe and make the escape, know that no plan fully survives contact with the enemy. But that doesn’t mean your product roadmap can’t peer around the corners and anticipate the needs and challenges of the future.

Learn more about how we at super{set} found and fund data-driven companies at superset.com

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