# Stream of consciousness Memo - 19 Jul 2022

Today in a couple of occasions, we asked our self as a team, how should we behave on this specific situation?
I'm convinced The Culture Book can serve as a powerful guide in these situations.

### Good Judgment
For instance, at the Tech Hurdle, we spoke about how to proceed on regard of the APY calculation. As you know, we value Good Judgement and thinking strategically about how to behave, the book instruct us to be `"smart on what must be done well now and what can be improved later"`. Being pragmatic and accepting that DONE is **always better than perfect** it's an empowing rule that "frees us" from the procrastination of looking for the "best solution" and, at the same time, allows us to fulfill our mandate for Impact.


### The Courage to succeed
There was also a long conversation, started from the DEFI++ Revamp about how to think about priorities.

We understand the **need to act intentionally**, it means we deeply know why are we doing the things we do. We built conviction, based on facts or at least educated assumptions, that is in fact the best course of action.
We build conviction because we are committed to constantly challenge assumptions and by doing that often, what's left are decision we know to be defendable because they stay unchallenged.

When ideas don't make the cut of defendability, we need to have the courage to make difficult decisions without excessive agony, if that's required.

*Dead branches don't get treated, they get pruned.*

Just be aware not to confuse ideas with circumstances, you can find out which one is which by asking yourself the right questions.

We started 2022 by looking back at the past year (see [PieDAO - Strategy Deck 2022](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1gLruf_vULyInUeFq8T24r4GgdeMPpsFOT4Mr_pEGgk4/edit?usp=sharing)) where we identified 3 Key Issues:

1. **Focus:** Where we committed to find a better way to prioritize efforts to be aligned to strategic goals
2. **Sloppy execution:** Where we committed to establish a culture of effectiveness & excellence.
3. **Low reach:** Where we committed to boost out acquisition channels, double down on what works.

When we focus we execute better
When we execute well we reach more people.
When we reach people we test with our customers.

**Focus > Execution > Reach**

Reaching people doesn't mean we are winning but loosing will become louder if we get there.

We spend a great deal of time debating between us things like `"If we would have more liquidity would people buy?"`
We ask ourself opinions but what we really need is feedback from customers. 99.999% of the times we are not our own customers.

There will be **rare times** when we are our customers, Uno is one example of that, the Treasury is sitting on $2M in stables and wants an easy way to farm them cross-chain.

However when that's not the case let's remember that.

**Validating an idea > Building it**

Reaching a 1000x growth multiplier starts with 10 people saying “wow".
By listening to our customers every day, we get to identify opportunities.

### Conclusion
As an early stage organization we only have one job: **Finding product market fit**.
We don't have to care about consistency, reputation, retrocompatibility, etc.. because none of them matter when you are dead :)

To maximise our chances to find PMF we only need 2 things:

1. Executing with focus on product
2. Always talk to customers

These two things go together, in parallel, hand by hand, always. In early stage tech, you are either a dev or a non-dev. If you are a dev your only resposability is to be **wired in**, you must ship as fast as possible consistently.

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If you are non-dev, then **you talk to customers**.
Call it however you like: sales, business development, marketing. You validate ideas over emails, over chat, you make pitches to find customers, you identify opportunities, you find partners, you give clariry on what to build.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/M1vfXoUNDYA?start=65" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Life is different from movies and reality might not be as glamorous as you see in TV but you get the idea, many principles stand true.

Shipping before finding users kills any MVP. Ask yourself, do I want to be desperately chasing the first 100 users to deposit in vault XYZ? No! You presell the idea 20 times first, this helps us realize who needs it more, what are the features customers need, which part of the product is useless, and how we position it after it’s ready.
It can be done in DeFi too like in every other business (see Umami, ApeTax).

There is a scale from 1 to 10 for product validation:

1 - collecting emails to validate the idea & not asking for money
10 - preselling for the full price

Setting the bar between 1 and 10 it's a choice we make on how quickly we want to find our ideal customer. Zero is not an option.

Real demand is beautiful, it's like having a super power, there is nothing like knowing people are thirsty to get more of what you have.

In conclusion, buckle up boyz, it's gonna get bumpy but I promise when we succeed (not if) you will not regret a moment.

In the mean time, check out the [Culture Book](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/150-pWMe41tT1zoQR6QiQtmLovOFrE5KQF07nher2Vbg/edit?usp=sharing) for a quick refresh on what is expected of you as a memember of the core team.