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Comment by swombat | Hacker News Reader

I'm not convinced about this point. The examples given (Zappos and Netflix) are, from what I know, extremely efficient companies, and likely were so from day one (in my experience, obsessive focus on efficiency doesn't magically arise one day... it's either there from the start or it's never there). My full response: http://swombat.com/2011/1/24/provide-fantastic-service

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I think the title "fantastic beats efficient" doesn't accurately reflect the main point of the article, since there's no reason at all why you can't be both fantastic and efficient.

I think a more accurate (though significantly less snappy) title would be "Don't be afraid to do something fantastic just because the business model doesn't look lucrative at first glance."

True, although I guess what I'm really saying is that, given the choice, you might pick "fantastic" in certain cases, at least in one or two areas in which it makes sense too.

Obviously if you have a profitable company you are, in some sense, "efficient." The point is that going "above and beyond" takes more time and money than not -- which is probably inefficient, especially at first -- and the question is: Is that tradeoff worth it?

That makes more sense. I'm still not sure whether there is a trade-off involved, though. The more I think about it (particularly about the examples you brought up, Netflix and Zappos), the more I get the feeling that the efficiency led to the fantastic, rather than the other way around. I guess this is fairly difficult point to resolve satisfactorily, though.

I suggest you read Tony Hsieh's book Delivering Happiness. My interpretation of his history of Zappos is that they were fantastic before they were efficient.

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