The Quantity Trap
There's a parable about photography that often gets posted in discussion forums. A short and snappy version of it goes like this:
Two photographers stand on a rocky coastline as massive waves crash against the shore.
The first is a digital photographer. His camera is set to high-speed burst mode, firing off 12 frames per second. Click-click-click-click-click. He is a whirlwind of movement, swapping out batteries, filling up 64GB memory cards, and constantly looking down at his LCD screen to see what he caught. He walks away with 3,000 images to sort through.
The second is a large-format film photographer. He sets up a heavy wooden field camera on a tripod. He spends 30 minutes leveling the frame, measuring the light, and adjusting the lens. He inserts a single sheet of film. Then, he just stands there, cable release in hand, watching the rhythm of the ocean. He lets ten, twenty, thirty waves pass by.
Finally, a perfect, massive swell builds and crests into a magnificent explosion of spray.
Click.
One single, deliberate exposure. He packs up his gear and smiles.
The observation from digital photography was: Because it makes it so cheap to take any one picture, people are less willing to spend the time to make sure it's going to be a good picture. "If I just take loads, there's bound to be a gem in there." We all know from our own mediocre vacation photos that quantity doesn't magically yield quality.
I fear the same will happen in software startups. If the cost to produce each new feature or an entirely new product becomes trivially low, why shouldn't we just throw lots of stuff at the wall and see what sticks? Same reason as in the parable: Without deliberate thought, the odds of something sticking, by pure chance alone, are vanishingly small. Might as well play the lottery then.
Imagine how much thought would have gone into setting up and building a company that produces expensive physical goods. Before a single thing was built, extensive market validation would have taken place. No "let's build lots of stuff and see what sticks" when the setup cost is in the millions. Even with the next-to-zero setup costs for software these days, it's still worth slowing down and being deliberate.
