Sam Altman – What It Means to Be Product-Focused

In his Startup Playbook, Sam Altman writes:

“Your goal as a startup is to create something users love. Once you do that, your next task is figuring out how to attract more users. But the first part is crucial—look at today’s most successful companies. They all started with a product that their early users loved so much, they told others about it. If you fail to do this, you will fail. And if you deceive yourself into thinking your users love your product when they don’t, you will still fail.”

In an interview, Sam explains what it truly means to be product-focused:

“Maybe if you’re really good and really dedicated, you can work around 70 really productive hours in a week. You have 70 hours to allocate, and the question is how you use them. When we at Y Combinator say ‘focus on product,’ it means you dedicate nearly all of those hours to talking to users, creating the product, and ensuring that some users genuinely love it.”

Sam continues:

“Most startups early on face a choice: either 1) attract a lot of users who like your product but don’t love it, or 2) attract a small group of users who truly love it. Every successful company I’ve been involved with has been in the second category. So, focusing on product means focusing on love, not just like; it means dedicating your time to writing code and speaking with users. Your product should be at the point where losing it would really upset some of your users.”