Not Now, Honey! I'm Trying to Compile This Code

Building The Right Thing vs Building The Thing Right

Building the right thing and building the thing right are the two goals of a successful tech company.

Growth will be low and retention lower if your customers don’t want what you sell. But you can’t stay in business too long if, once they sign in, your product isn’t good enough. A competitor will eventually take your place.

By talking to customers and doing things that don’t scale, you can mitigate the risk of not building the right thing. And by creating “moats”, you keep competitors at bay and facilitate building the thing right.

You can also build tech in a way that helps you build the right thing, and build the thing right. The problem, of course, is that figuring out what the right thing is and nailing down how to do it right are at odds with each other.

It’s a narrow path. One that every tech leader must walk if they want to be successful.

And you’re going to need all the help you can get.

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Welcome to Money In Transit, the newsletter bridging the gap between payments strategy and execution. I’m Alvaro Duran.

Today’s post is the sixth installment on a series I’ve called A Sketch of a Payment Systems Protocol. These include an exploration of the causes of the demise of Java, why designing payments like ocean freight could be the key, and the advantages of persistence ignorance.

They’re all free to read.

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