Michael Seibel - Building Product
Key ideas
Seibel walks through how to pick a problem and customer, measure usage and run short build cycles, while admitting Justin.tv broke these rules and survived on other strengths.
From a machine transcript of the audio. Quotes link to the moment they are said.
- 1
Test the problem and the customer first
Seibel asks founders to state the problem in a sentence or two, narrow it to who can be helped first, and ask whether it is solvable at all, then to check how often customers have it, how intense it is, whether they will pay and how easily they can be reached. The example is Poppy, an on-demand babysitting company, which found infant care very hard because the sitters parents would trust tend to hold well-paid nanny jobs.
- 2
Start with desperate customers, and charge them
Because an MVP is bad by definition, Seibel says to look first for customers desperate enough to use it, not impressive names, friends or investors. Seibel says a price is almost always better than starting free, since free attracts people who are only trying things out, and that free fits users you never plan to charge. Seibel also warns that bad customers can hijack a company and suggests identifying them early.
- 3
Track one number, then ship short cycles
Seibel wants one top-line number, almost always revenue or, if you will never charge, a usage figure such as daily actives, plus event tracking written into every product spec. At Socialcam each two-week cycle began with one open brainstorm, easy-medium-hard sizing and a written spec, and that was the only meeting. Seibel contrasts this with Justin.tv's three-month releases, driven by argument and no written spec.
- 4
Change the solution before the customer
Seibel defines a pivot as changing the customer or the problem and says it should be rare, while changing the solution is iteration; two months is too short a test, and two years is closer to the right frame. Twitch came from gamers who stayed at about 20% of Justin.tv traffic while being ignored. What changed, Seibel says, was talking to them and building the fairly small things they asked for.
- 5
What let Justin.tv break the rules
Seibel says Justin.tv broke many if not all of this advice and survived on three things: an extremely technical founding team, very low spending, and founders whose egos were tied to the company. In Seibel's view, removing any one of the three would have killed it.
In Michael’s words
“So the real question is like, how do you find people who are willing to use a bad product? Right? They have to be the most desperate.”
Michael Seibel·Michael Seibel - Building Product·Watch at 21:50(opens the original in a new tab)“So, I define pivot as changing the customer or changing the problem. This should be rare. This should happen infrequently. Many times, this means you should start a new company. I define iterate as changing the solution.”
Michael Seibel·Michael Seibel - Building Product·Watch at 44:42(opens the original in a new tab)“You can talk to a passionate user and then you can build what they want. And then you can say, here it is. And they will fall in love with you even if those features are relatively mundane.”
Michael Seibel·Michael Seibel - Building Product·Watch at 49:54(opens the original in a new tab)About this entry
- Published
- Sep 5, 2018
- Channel
- Y Combinator
- Type
- Video
- Length
- 59:06
- Language
- English
- Added
- Nov 2, 2026
- Source last checked
- Nov 2, 2026
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