Back in 2015, when I set off to see if the world needed Poppy, I didnât know how to tell my front end from my back end; I didnât understand just how servers and database tables and API calls worked together to get me my data if and when I wanted it. Nor did I know even the basics of HTML, CSS and Javascript to put up a website or the intricacies of taking payments over the internet.
But what I did know, was what my users wanted. What I wanted. And so, no, I didnât know the labels of things, or even that I was building my very own âno-codeâ tech stack, but I knew what I needed to get the job done.
Lucky for me, the early 2010s were a beautiful balance of just enough specialized, âoff the shelfâ tools that worked well but not too many to overwhelm me.
Tools like Typeform, who not only made beautiful forms for my signup, but who had an option to connect to Stripe and take payment or to create a simple 2 question NPS checkins. And each form would spit out a handy link - to connect to a button on the website, or to just text over to be filled out.
The same for TextIt sitting on top of Twilio to allow me to send messages at mass or Squarespace allowing me to WYSIWYG (âwhat you see is what you getâ) my way to a reasonable looking landing page (by 2015 standards đ ).
The point is: I was able to build Poppy as a non full-stack dev because I had the privilege of standing on the shoulders of the giants like Twilio and Typeform and Stripe.
Said another way: Iâm not certain I could have gotten Poppy off the ground even just 2-3 years prior, without getting stuck in abyss of: âIâm not technical so I canât do itâ or the bog of: âtoo manual, for too long.â
My moonshot was possible because of the established, but still in progress moonshots of others. Others who were just a couple years ahead in endeavour and many of whom I would come to know well as fellow founders.
Building Milo now, I realize that that experience was both formative and informative. even today, I look readily for shoulders on which to stand upon.
1. Donât waste time or get distracted building anything not driving your core, competitive advantage. âStartups donât starve. They drown.â I think about this advice nearly daily. The most critical thing in the early days is to 1. narrow down your focus on the core thing you do well, 2. get a toehold with users and then 3. iterate to more. When youâre making a pizza - itâs good enough to use ready made dough and starter sauce, while focusing on the seasoning and toppings. Of course, to make truly extraordinary pizza one needs to do it all from scratch. But then youâre getting started and serving your family, itâs more important to see if they even like pizza and what kind of toppings and flavor profiles they like. Itâs easier to do that if you start with the core thing you want to be known for and see if it resonates at all, before getting down to the expensive and slow business of doing it all from scratch and perfecting it like an artisan.
Earn the right to solve those other things from scratch.
2. Get to know how that piece of the value chain will need to work, without needing to do it yet. Constraints are often seen as negative, but Iâve come to realize theyâre my friend. Too often itâs easy to get overwhelmed by the sheer number of things you could do, that having options taken out of my hands is such a gift. By using âoff-the-shelfâ products, you can see exactly where and how they need to fit into the overall value delivery but without having to sweat the âwhatâ exactly.
For example: if youâre building a sign-up form from scratch, not only are you designing the questions and the order, but you have to figure out what it looks like - are the buttons rounded or square, do the questions appear one at a time, how do you store and pass the data? Itâs so easy to get caught up with all of those things that you forget that the only thing that really matters is: what are you asking and are people doing it? With Typeform, you donât really have a ton of choice but because itâs built so well, you donât really care. Even today, when I have the ability to build custom sign up forms, I still prefer to use Typeform. Because the sign-up form is not where my value lies and I can be okay with good-enough.
3. Stay in touch with what best-in class products look and feel like, just a couple years ahead. In the early days, especially as someone from the outside, itâs hard to really understand how great is built. But itâs easy to know what great feels like. Thatâs why when I first came across Stripe and Twilio and Typeform, I knew these were products and companies I wanted to learn from, even if we were in entirely different businesses. The more I used their products, the more I got a sense of the bar I wanted my product to aspire to. Putting yourself in the company of giants makes you want to grow to match them - in product and purpose. Even today, I look over to companies like Stripe and Front and Figma and Sunsama to get a sense of what great looks and feels like.
The point is: never has it been easier to build on the shoulders of others building incredible products.
Today, those examples involve the more obvious examples of being able to create whole apps with Glide or building an e-commerce shop with Shopify or talking to customers at scale with Front.
But itâs also true about the cutting edges of technology. Fascinated by AI and large language models? Building on top of GPT-3 or DALL-E is actually pretty accessible and only getting better. Into blockchain and the potential of tokens? You can see if you have something with Coinvise or Manifold.
The point is: go. Be curious. Dream up things you want to build.
Then see which bits someone else is doing remarkably well and build on top of their shoulders.
Youâll reach higher heights, faster, while building an appreciation for great products along the way.