How much are you willing to sacrifice customer experience for the sake of an early product release?

We had a discussion lately about one of our startup’s B2C product prototypes. Interestingly, something hindered me from just putting that early product out to the market, and through our discussion, I found out why that is.

As product creators, we often prioritize speed over customer experience when it comes to early validation. We want to deliver on promised value as soon as possible and improve the journey towards it later.

However, this approach doesn’t work for B2C entertainment products where customers expect a flawless onboarding process.

Time is their most valuable resource, and they expect to be entertained from the very first screen. While this should also be the case for B2B SaaS products, those customers are more willing to endure a not-so-perfect journey if it solves a pain or makes their job easier.

While we may think that we can make the journey better afterwards once desirability has been validated, with entertainment products, the experience begins in the very first second.

There’s no way to ship fast if shipping fast means scrutinizing that experience.