Sam Altman explains what it means to be product-focused

In his Startup Playbook, Sam writes:

“Your goal as a startup is to make something users love. If you do that, then you have to figure out how to get a lot more users. But this first part is critical—think about the really successful companies of today. They all started with a product that their early users loved so much they told other people about it. If you fail to do this, you will fail. If you deceive yourself and think your users love your product when they don’t, you will still fail.”

In this interview, he explains what it means to be product-focused:

“Maybe if you’re really good and really dedicated, you can work like 70 really productive hours in a week. So you have 70 hours to allocate and there’s the question of how you allocate those. When we [at Y Combinator] say ‘focus on product,’ it means that you put almost all of those hours into talking to users, creating product, and making sure that you have some users that really love your product.”

Sam continues:

“Most startups in the early days face a choice of either 1) getting a lot of users that like your product but don’t love it; or 2) a small number of users that really love your product. Every really successful company that I have been involved with has been in that second category. So, focus on product means: focus on love, not like; and spending your time writing code and talking to users. You need to get the product to the point where some people would be really bummed if it went away.”

Full video: Greylock “Blitzscaling 02: Sam Altman on Y Combinator and What Makes The Best Founders“ (Sep 2015)