Applied First-Principles

I used to be really into cars. It was my first word. As a teenager, I had subscriptions to both Car & Driver AND Road & Track. I was big into car culture.

On Twitter, I followed journalist E.W. Niedermeyer for years.

In 2015, he decided to check out Tesla’s battery swap station which had been earning the company billions in credits from California taxpayers.

Turned out it wasn’t real.

In product management “first-principles thinking” can be important to get fresh perspective and promote innovation.

For example, I think the consumer insight underpinning the success of Tesla is fairly clear and compelling.

It aligns with an Amazon leadership principle: invent and simplify.

The consumer insight is that Karens want to treat cars like they do smartphones:

• lease an electronic device
• view as a status symbol
• receive online updates
• trade in for new model

But, there is a couple of yuge differences: you don’t pilot your smartphone at 70 mph down the interstate and iPhones are designed to “feel expensive.”

Teslas are built with the craftsmanship of a Toyota Corolla and priced like a Mercedes C-class.

Also, when a smartphone crashes while traveling at high speed, consumers aren’t risking the life of their family as it reboots.

One of Space Karen’s first-principles is to find the guy who came up with the product requirement.

Meanwhile, the product and engineering team doesn’t really try that hard to find the guy, before killing the requirement.

A Reuters investigation has revealed that “cheap and simple parts” like power-steering, axles, and control arms frequently fail in Teslas. Then, the customer gets blamed.

It’s almost like the message to Twitter advertisers wasn’t actually a new thought. “Go f-ck yourself” is a whole vibe.

Therefore, to quote Rod Hilton, if you know anything about software product management, requirements, and principled leadership, maybe “stay the hell away from his cars” 🤷🏻‍♂️