One thing I’ve changed my mind about recently is the value of speed.
\nFor a long time, I thought one of the biggest advantages of being a technical founder was simple:
\nI didn’t have to wait.
\nIf I had an idea, I could build it. I didn’t necessarily need to find an engineer, raise money to hire a team, write a detailed specification and wait several months to discover whether the thing in my head could actually work.
\nI could just start.
\nThat still feels like an enormous advantage but I no longer think the real advantage is being able to build faster.
\nI think it is being able to learn faster, that sounds like a small distinction. I’m increasingly convinced it is a very important one.
\nThe distance between an idea and a convincing piece of software has totally collapsed. An idea that might previously have required weeks or months of engineering can sometimes be explored in days or hours.
\nAI can help write the code.
\nIt can suggest the architecture.
\nIt can build interfaces.
\nIt can generate tests.
\nIt can help debug problems, analyze data and write documentation.
\nSmall teams can now attempt things that would previously have required significantly more people and money.
\nThat’s extraordinary.
\nBut it has created an interesting problem.
\nWhen building becomes cheaper, being able to build something becomes weaker evidence that it should be built.
\nAlmost every interesting thought can now be followed far enough to resemble a product of some sort and I think that makes judgment more important, not less.
\nThe cost of being wrong is getting cheaper, it may sound entirely positive and mostly it is but I think it could also make us wrong more often than not.
\nWhen building something required six months, a team and a significant amount of capital, there was friction before you committed. That certainly didn’t prevent bad products anyway… we’ve spent decades proving that.
\nBut today that friction is disappearing.
\nI can have a thought in the morning and have something fairly convincing running shortly afterwards. The temptation is to interpret that velocity as progress.
\nIdea
\nPrototype.
\nFeature.
\nIntegration.
\nLaunch.
\nRepeat.
\nBut moving quickly and learning quickly aren’t necessarily the same thing.
\nYou can build very quickly in completely the wrong direction.
\nThis is probably where my thinking has changed the most… sike! actually no! it hasn’t but its refined in a different way.
\nI still strongly hold that adequate consistent motion is better than a well thought-out execution that comes sporadically at time-friction-cost of solution.
\nI used to see the ability to move quickly from idea to implementation as an advantage but now I think the better use of that ability is to shorten the distance between:
\nassumption → experiment → evidence.
\nBuild enough to learn.
\nNot enough to prove how sophisticated the architecture could become.
\nBuild the uncomfortable version that answers the question you’re avoiding.
\nPut it in front of somebody.
\nWatch what they actually do.
\nThen decide what deserves to happen next.
\nThat requires a different relationship with the things you build.
\nYou have to be willing to throw them away
\nAnd throwing software away can be particularly difficult when you’re the person who knows exactly how much thinking went into creating it.
\nAs execution becomes cheaper, I’m beginning to think restraint becomes more valuable.
\nThat last one is difficult for engineers.
\n\n\nWe’re used to problems eventually yielding if we spend enough time on them.
\nThe test fails, you debug it.
\nThe system is slow, you profile it.
\nThe architecture breaks at scale, you redesign it.
\nPersistence is rewarded.
\nMarkets don’t necessarily behave like that.
\n
You cannot refactor your way into demand.
\nPartly AI.
\nPartly building companies.
\nMostly the accumulation of watching the difference between things that are technically possible and things people genuinely care about.
\nI’m probably capable of building more today than at any other point in my career.
\nThe tools are better.
\nMy experience is deeper.
\nAI has dramatically increased what one person can attempt.
\nBut I increasingly want to measure progress by something other than how much software I can produce.
\nThe technical founder’s advantage might not be:
\nI can build this faster than you.
\nIt might be:
\nI can find out whether this should exist faster than you.
\nThat means technical ability still matters enormously but the scarce skill moves somewhere else, it moves towards judgment.
\nToward understanding people.
\nToward asking better questions.
\nToward recognizing weak signals before turning them into six months of work.
\nAnd toward having enough detachment from your own ability to build something to decide that you shouldn’t.
\nThat’s what I’ve changed my mind about.
\nSpeed still matters.
\nI’m just much less interested in the speed of building than I used to be.
\nI’m becoming far more interested in the speed of learning.
\nA picture I took during my run on Thursday looking across from the bay.
\nOriginally published as I’ve Changed My Mind About Speed on Notes by Wale.
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