Wow, I really appreciate you taking the time to thoughtfully answer these. Thank you!
There's no particular mantra I had in mind. Some examples would be to "do things that don't scale" or "fail fast" or to not focus on what your competitors are doing.
I understand there's no one-size-fits-all of course.. and I suppose that's the reason I'm asking. I'm curious what in your experience has turned out maybe counterintuitive or where you went against the grain. And what standard wisdom you may look back on and say: "Wow if we had done what everyone had advised us to do.. I don't think we would've ever gotten here."
Thank you and congrats again! Best wishes to you and Amplitude moving forward.
I think part of it is the foundational wisdom is by and large correct. The hard part is knowing which applies to your situation. One place I got tripped up on was thinking the answer to every problem was working harder, preparing more, and being more disciplined. It took me many years to figure out some problems needed a different set of skills (eg listening, setting expectations, running a meeting).
One other place where it was correct to not listen to- everyone hated our market, particularly investors. We didn't listen to them. It was very clear to me that there was a big opportunity: usage of mobile phones was exploding, apps and web 2.0 was so different it would require a totally new form of infrastructure and tooling. Zynga, Facebook, Netflix were already embracing this approach and it was only a matter a time before everyone else did as well. I remember one very prominent venture capitalist told us they'd fund us but IFF we stopped working on Amplitude. We didn't listen to them, thank goodness!
There's no particular mantra I had in mind. Some examples would be to "do things that don't scale" or "fail fast" or to not focus on what your competitors are doing.
I understand there's no one-size-fits-all of course.. and I suppose that's the reason I'm asking. I'm curious what in your experience has turned out maybe counterintuitive or where you went against the grain. And what standard wisdom you may look back on and say: "Wow if we had done what everyone had advised us to do.. I don't think we would've ever gotten here."
Thank you and congrats again! Best wishes to you and Amplitude moving forward.