Firebase Is Doing And Looking Great

We had lunch with James today and amazing things were going down over at Firebase, right as we were eating. Few people I know deserve success as much as James and team Firebase, and it sounds like in addition to the hard work, the good idea, the handsome team (see, they look like a boy band), they seem to have unlocked some secret to customer development that’s helping them get it right with the product.

The (not-so-) secret, of course, is talking to customers, but as far as using their feedback for prioritization, I’ve never found this as easy as it sounds. My own experience sounds a lot more like what the folks at 37signals describe: they’ll want everything under the sun. And yes, it is exactly “just this little extra feature” or “this can’t be hard” or “wouldn’t it be easy to add this” or “it should take just a few seconds to add this” or “if you added this I’d pay twice as much” etc.

James says: the simple constraint of having a tiny team forces them to put the spotlight on the right thing without any room for anything else.

I am so happy for James, and would be jealous of how well he is doing if he wasn’t so generous with his insights and feedback.