Start with the customer. Reason from first principles. Build with agents.

Before anything gets built, I pin down exactly who we build for, where we want to be in a few years, and the one thing we win on: customer intimacy, product leadership or operational excellence. Focus means saying no to good ideas that don’t get us there.

WhyThe first release is a stepping stone. Netflix began by mailing DVDs but picked its name for the internet age it expected. DVDs built the customer base; streaming was always the destination.Read: The power of saying ‘no’ →

Understand exactly what one user does all day and what they need. Describe the end state we want to enable for them, then build the product and technology plan backwards from it.

WhyMost products are built inside out, from a feature list. Starting from the customer’s reality is how you build something they actually use.

Question every requirement and delete before you optimise; the best requirement is the one you remove. Then reason from what is true: data volume, the cost to store, query and run AI on it, and how much time analysts really have.

WhyBest practice is just what the last vendor did. Designing from the facts is how you find architectures and economics that get better as customers grow, not more expensive.

Bring customers and partners in early as design partners, put working prototypes in their hands and iterate in weeks, not quarters. It is judged in their environment, not in a demo.

WhyIt is the fastest way to build confidence in product-market fit. When design partners rely on it in their own environment, you know you are building the right thing before you scale it.Read: Continuous feedback and rapid iteration →

Success is customers deploying it and buying it, not the GA date. That takes the whole company ready on day one: sales can pitch it, sales engineers can prove it, customer success can deploy it and support knows what to expect.

WhyA GA nobody deploys is a cost, not a win. I judge a product by adoption and revenue, not by its release date, and I build go-to-market readiness into the plan from the start.