Essays
Why Saying Yes Too Often Kills Products
Summary
"What I learned from shutting down my first company: the hardest thing in product is choosing what not to build."
When I started my first company, we were building accounting and inventory software for small businesses.
Each client request felt reasonable. We said yes to everything. Scheme-based discounts. Barcode batching. Custom VAT reports. SMS alerts.
When It Broke
No two clients used the same flow. Support escalations went up. The product became blurry.
We were not building a product. We were building custom solutions for each client.
The Lesson
We shut it down. Not because the idea was bad. But because we said yes too often.
The hardest thing in product is not building. It is choosing what not to build.