- There were no PMs. No one was chasing vanity metrics. No endless barrage of a/b tests. No growth hacking. Instead, product was built the old-fashioned way - by talking to customers; quite often, customers would reach out to us! "Please build time-saving feature x", "support new medical procedure y", "help us publish more research by analyzing z". The heap of ideas was large, and teams were free to apply their own ranking functions. Some top-down strategic initiatives were threaded through all products. This led to every release being packed with things that customers wanted.
- They leveraged their advantages. Plentiful, cheap land → everyone had an office with a door, possibly shared with 1 other person. Productive people flourished. On the flip side, those who were languishing fell faster and deeper into their holes.
- They learned to live with their weaknesses. Not everyone wants to live in WI, and many who are willing to try end up looking for warmer pastures in a few years. Epic ended up being an early-career transit hub. Their attrition rates would cripple most tech cos, but they shored themselves through extensive training programs, and by rewarding the anchors that stayed.
- They took pride in the product. Every month, the CEO personally presented the latest qualitative assessment of each product (as assessed by an independent third-party). If your product slipped from green to yellow, the pressure would trickle down to you. Also, there were no outbound sales, because having the product speak for itself was the sales strategy.
Of course, not everything was rosy, but much has been said here about the shortcomings of Epic, and I wanted to point out what's contributed to the immense stamina that has kept them in the lead for decades.