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True virality is 'customer augmented marketing' where the product's value is so high that users naturally promote it, reducing marketing spend.

"Virality is really when the word of mouth of a product is high quality... It's when customers market your product. And that is incredibly powerful, but also that's incredibly actionable."

Network effects create a 'critical mass' that makes a product extremely difficult to displace, even by well-funded competitors.

"Network effects is when you create value for passive members by other people joining the network... Network effects is a feature by itself, and it's the most powerful feature."

A comprehensive candidate evaluation must look beyond technical skills to include inherent attributes (e.g., boldness) and core values.

"Bridgewater thinks of people in three dimensions, their skills, their attributes, and their values. Most organizations think about people in terms of just their skills. But it makes sense that people..."

Intentional 'Forest Time' is required to ensure that the high cost of engineering execution is aimed at the right strategic goals.

"Forest time is the idea that you make time within your week, within your month to see the forest for the trees... to elevate, to get some bird's eye view, to see the entire landscape and see the alter..."

The choice of problem space is a primary predictor of startup success, often more so than the specific methodology used to build the company.

"The problem space and the solutions to the problems space is still a big driver of success in building software companies. What problem are you really solving? And if you believe that the problem spac..."

Solving 'sharp' problems provides a buffer for execution mistakes because customer obsession with the solution will carry the product.

"Pick a problem that is materially felt by your customers, pain points that steal their time, their energy, their money, their focus, the inability to afford their leisure. If you can solve those kinds..."

Product teams should distinguish between active discovery and 'customer listening'—the systematic processing of existing signals from support, sales, and social media.

"Customer listening is different. It's not really discovery. It is the scarfing up of customer signals that are happening constantly anyway. So people are talking on social, people are talking on app s..."