Ask HN: Steve Jobs and scope creep, what can we learn from it? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Steve Jobs and scope creep, what can we learn from it?

2 pointshybrid115 comments

Here's an excerpt out Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs:

"Job's prickly behaviour was partly driven by his perfectionism and his impatience with those who made compromises in order to get a product out on time and on budget. 'He would not make trade-offs well,' said Atkinson. 'If someone didn't care to make their product perfect, they were a bozo.'"

A lot of blogs promote start ups/products to release quickly or iteratively in order to get feedback from customers. Given the scope creep/perfection of Apple products (compared to the competition), Apple been able to stay ahead of the competition, while still releasing high quality and successful products. What parallels can be applied to start ups?

In addition to what others here have said, Apple historically has been a hardware and software shop. It takes a lot more time for them to piece things together than it would for a web or mobile startup, something Apple have very low presence in themselves. Aside from the OSes and mostly desktop software (which are giant tasks by nature), very few of what Apple does can be directly compared to how most tech startups operate these days.

None or very few. Apple was not a startup when it was polishing products to perfection. For a startup, the first imperative should be to stay afloat, or to generate enough revenue to even begin thinking about features that may be "nice" sometime in the future.

Startups generally don't have the luxury of cash reserves that Apple has. Apple can afford to be patient and release things when they are ready. Startups usually cannot.

Furthermore, no one is lining up outside your stores days in advance to get at your product/service. In all likelihood, a handful of people know and care about your startup.

Actually, Apple was a start up. Start ups don't all have to share the same strategy.

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