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Comment by j_baker | Hacker News Reader

It's amazing to see how some of these have been accepted as conventional wisdom in startups while others seem to be completely rejected by startups.

In particular, the whole perfectionism thing seems to be pretty much rejected. Most startups would say that it's better just to get something launched. I'm definitely not saying that's wrong. Just saying that it's interesting to hear another point of view.

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Good point -

There was another article recently about Apple that addressed this -- "You Can't Innovate Like Apple"

http://bit.ly/3eYW

In short -- Apple's focus on perfection/design (they plan on 'throwing out' 90% of their work) is hard to match for a young start-up with limited time/money/(talent).

Proper link: http://www.pragmaticmarketing.com/publications/magazine/6/4/...

Steve Jobs certainly understood the importance of ship dates, so he wasn't exactly going to fall into the Duke Nukem / Grand Turismo 5 tar pit.

"Real artists ship" http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Real_Artists_Ship...

An important distinction, though, is that with software, particularly server-side software, it's fine to get it wrong several times, as you can fix it quickly and all in one place.

The difficulty increases as you move to desktop software and it increases a LOT more as you move to hardware, obviously.

i-tunes seemingly has to have a new update and install every time I open it, so I'd question how much "perfection" goes into the releases of Appl software.

Yes, but you have to actually go back and fix, not just pile on features

Well, there is also a difference between what should be important to a startup (just get anything out there to get some customers/revenue) versus an establish company like Apple (be perfect with our consumer products).

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