There are really two things that have to occur in order for a new technology to be affordable to the mass market. One is you need economies of scale. The other is you need to iterate on the design. You need to go through a few versions.
You have to imagine a world in which there's this abundance of data, with all of these connected devices generating tons and tons of data. And you're able to reason over the data with new computer science and make your product and service better. What does your business look like then? That's the question every CEO should be asking.
If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you've launched too late.
You don't always have to start over to create an emotional reaction to your product. It's always powerful to deliver a breakthrough, but there's also a true art to making something great even better.
In the next decade, I see Spanx going worldwide. Everywhere. No butt left behind. It's going to be all over the world and it's going to be an aspirational brand that transcends categories. There's so many things we can improve upon and make better.
My sweet spot is figuring out how to make a product that people love and how to refine it to make them love it more. All the rest is business noise.
If advertisers spent the same amount of money on improving their products as they do on advertising then they wouldn't have to advertise them.
Here's the thing about Apple, we complain and they give us more battery life. We complain and they'll give us more stuff. Everything's beta right now. Everything's experimental. They really don't know what people want.
Wherever we are seeing something getting used, that to us is an early indicator that there might be something that people want. And then let's figure out how to make that great. And then let's go figure out monetization.
I already am a product.
If you're not embarrassed when you ship your first version, you waited too long.
I had a hundred things I wanted to be, but when I was 13, I wanted to be an inventor. I wanted to improve the blow-dryer because it takes so long to blow-dry your hair, and it's just a waste of time. I wanted to invent the therm-alarm, which would have you throw your sheets off in the night when you got too hot.
To those men and women in business, remember the ultimate end of your work: to make a better product, to create better lives. I ask you to plan for the longer term and avoid that temptation of quick and easy paper profits.
I'm committed to try to make the product the best I possibly can.
We win because we hire the smartest people. We improve our products based on feedback, until they're the best. We have retreats each year where we think about where the world is heading.
Making a product better often requires removing features.
Let advertisers spend the same amount of money improving their product that they do on advertising and they wouldn't have to advertise it.
Good companies do whatever it takes to make sure apps are great and don't hesitate to add features.
Research is an organized method of trying to find out what you are going to do after you cannot do what you are doing now. It may also be said to be the method of keeping a customer reasonably dissatisfied with what he has. That means constant improvement and change so that the customer will be stimulated to desire the new product enough to buy it to replace the one he has.
Fixing mistakes is one thing. Apple's bigger strength has been its ability to keep improving hit products.
When you improve your product so it does the customer's job better, then you gain market share.
I'd rather spend money on things that improve the customer experience than on marketing.
People are forgiving of v 1.0 of a product if it's truly innovative and useful. Then you can get away with a lot. But if you're merely marginally improving the status quo, then you better be rock solid.
We're simple-minded, the team at Hulu, which is, we think if we can obsess over quality and build a better mousetrap, that good things will happen. Users will adopt the service, advertisers will see great value in it, and that's what we're seeing.
Once your product is working, switch from not caring about this to caring about this a little bit.
