Great products are not born from feature lists or competitive analysis. They emerge from a deep understanding of the problems people face and a relentless commitment to solving them elegantly.

Start With the Problem

When we built Flatiron School, we did not start by asking what features a coding bootcamp should have. We started by asking: why do so many smart, motivated people struggle to break into software development?

The answer was not a lack of free resources or tutorials. It was the absence of structure, community, and real projects that mirror what professional developers actually do.

"The best interfaces feel inevitable, as if there were no other way to design them."

Cut Ruthlessly

Every feature you add makes everything else harder. It makes your product harder to understand, harder to maintain, and harder to evolve. The right question is not "would this be nice to have?" but "would users quit without this?"

def ship_it
  cut_scope until viable?
  build_smallest_version
  measure_and_iterate
end

This approach applies to code as much as product. The ship_it method above captures the essence: start minimal, measure reality, and iterate based on data.