| Again, I don't disagree with you... just think reality makes it messy. Pivoting via "scrap & salvage" is pretty tough for a startup. The tech behind whatsapp was evidently good, but the IP behind a messaging app is probably not enough to give you an edge. Users are. Made up scenario: whatsapp loses the SMS replacement game. They have millions of users, but not a billion. Meanwhile, they find that a subset of users like to use whatsapp for dating (or customer support, etc. doesn't matter). They pivot to focus on those customers, and evolve into something else. This might be a (drama noted) colossal fuckup scenario in an engineering sense. A tractor that you are now converting into a ship. Evolving is definitely a worse way of engineering than starting with the intention of designing a ship, with neatly defined tonnage, speed and size requirements. Instead, it takes a miracle to implement basic ship features like floating. Evolving is how a lot of actual software gets invented. Spreadsheets were intended for accountants. They weren't meant to be used as a database, incident report generators, a casual programming environment, or a HR tool. It became those things by evolving. It happened that way because inventing UIs is hard, and evolving into them happened to work. It's still true that "colossal fuckup scenarios" arise because of this approach. Excel programmer spent decades making excel better at things it's architecture wasn't good at. It's ugly and messy, but life is sometimes ugly and messy. Flexibility is valuable. Knowing the spec in advance is valuable. Very valuable. They're in conflict with each other to some extent |