* Answering many, many support emails and tweets
* Raising our seed round
* Stopping our infrastructure from collapsing under our user growth
* Responding to press and bloggers
* Reading resumés and interviewing job candidates
* Fixing gnarly bugs in production
* Applying for visas, so that we could work in the US
* Attending YC dinners and office hours
How is all this not moving the product forward? I am genuinely curious, to an outsider like me, this is what is the growth of the company. All these things have to be done one time or another.
The article mentions other companies frequently rolling out new features. In that context, the product wasn't moving forward because no new features were added during the YC phase. While scaling and bugfixing probably count as moving the product forward, the rest is arguably moving the company forward.
wouldn't the company die if there is too much focus on the product part and not much on the selling part. I mean if you stop customer support, many users will move out. Also if the solution fails often, why the heck will one use it?
"The product" is defined as the activity whereby the engineering organization delivers new products and features to customers. All of the above activities are important, but they're not "the product".
A product is something you offer to the user, to me if I am buying a service or a product I am also buying the customer service and the reliability (the service should never stop unless its supposed to). So the support emails and tweets are the product, as is the Fixing gnarly bugs in production and Stopping our infrastructure from collapsing under our user growth.
If you are growing, you will have to have new employees so of course you will have to Read resumés and interview job candidates. This is essential for developing the product (even as defined by you).
The only slightly unnecessary thing on the list is the responses to press and bloggers and applying for visas. I say this because both could be avoided if 1) your product does not require much press(as in, it is a tool which is used by experts, not something which has to be advertised) and 2) you can work in what ever country you are in.
