I was listening to a recent podcast, where my friend Nick Bilton interviews Dick Costolo. Dick is a successful serial entrepreneur and previously the CEO at Twitter. I had the pleasure of working with Dick when I served on the Twitter board.
It’s a fantastic interview and Dick has one interesting story after another about his life experiences (life as an improv comedian in Chicago, the Twitter IPO roadshow and others).
At one point, Dick talks about his respect for Evan Spiegel, the cofounder and CEO at Snap. Dick calls Evan one of the most important product thinkers of our time and cites Snaps invention of the Stories format which launched back in 2013.
Many people didn’t get this format right away. Dick mentions that it took a good 18 months of it to catch on. Other companies might have abandoned this feature much sooner
David Karp who founded Tumblr in 2006 and still runs it to this today has the same product instincts. He imagines something, builds it and then will introduce it to the world. Sometimes he likes and it often he doesn’t.
No A/B tests to create conviction.
It’s just a product from the heart.
And that can be a beautiful thing.