Max Levchin Quotes

I go on Twitter and I ask my viewers, 'What would you like to see next season in my line?' or 'What are things you love to wear?' They're the ones wearing it, so I want to make sure it applies to them.

When you take the individual out of the equation, then you're making programming based on some marketer's idea of what will sell, and not based on the idea of what an individual would like.

The only people with power today are the audience. And that is increasing with Twitter, Facebook, and everything else. We cater to their likes and dislikes, and you ignore that at your peril.

The audience is never wrong.

In fact, we actually listen to fans all the time. It's helpful because you want to get a sense of what people are looking for and what they disagree with.

We need to listen to consumers' needs.

Customers don't know what they want. There's plenty of good psychology research that shows that people are not able to accurately predict how they would behave in the future. So asking them, 'Would you buy my product if it had these three features?' or 'How would you react if we changed our product this way?' is a waste of time. They don't know.

I love getting consumer reports. I think it's one of my favourite things, studying what people have to say about the product and then trying to make it better.

I have shifted my mindset in terms of how companies should... focus on building amazing products. If you have amazing products, the marketing of those products is trivial.

When you let travelers vote with their clicks, and you put that at the center of your decision-making, you build the product they want, and ultimately, their business will follow.

Products are sold because they solve a problem or fill a need. Understanding problems and needs involves understanding customers and what makes them tick.

Product development is emotional for me! It's really important as a brand that we feel that our products are going to be life-changing for everyone who buys them. We won't ever launch something we don't feel strongly about.

If people keep buying poorly designed products, manufacturers and designers will think they are doing the right thing and continue as usual.

The thing about startups is you can make it, and if it's wrong you can remake it, and you can build a team that you want to have, a product that you want to have. You're utterly focused on your users or your customers and their needs, and trying to figure out how to meet those needs.

Do I take criticism of Starbucks personally? Of course I do.

When we have a corporation, we must know what the customer wants, what the customers needs. Also, the politician must know what the people want, what the people need.

I think that building any product that has a lot of user loyalty is a bit like making a sequel to a great movie or video game - people generally want 'more of the same thing, except better and different.'

Our first product was Quicken, which is personal financial management on a PC. It had a tough start, and we ran some tracking surveys to understand who was using it. Half the users claimed to use it in some sort of office environment. We ignored that. I thought it was meaningless.

I think the biggest challenge over time is that we stay creative and making sure that we continue to launch awesome products that people love.

We don't really talk about our future plans. But we, at the same time, try to build things that our users ask us for.

We obviously try to be in tune with what our users want.

In the old world, people used to have to go to focus groups and ask people what they thought. Now, people are writing all over the Web what they think about things.

Your goal as an entrepreneur is to understand not only what your business does but the clients that it serves. If you really have your pulse on their needs and wants, then your 'absolute' failures are always going to have limits.

I realized very quickly that the public has a perfect right to tell you what they want to see.

You can always change your branding or hire lawyers, but it's critical that you figure out if you have product market fit, and if you don't, figure out how to course-correct without getting stuck.