Scott Belsky's Quotes

"It requires incredible self-awareness, humility, and courage to change org models, business models and product object models. These “Re-inventers” are the true “unicorns.”"

— Scott Belsky

"The truly experienced product builders are like Bonsai masters, they prune and cut the most beautiful branches to strengthen the trunk."

— Scott Belsky

"you should never outsource your story or any component of your competitive advantage."

— Scott Belsky

"a prototype is worth a hundred meetings, and almost all product meetings that aren’t grounded with a prototype are a waste of time (or worse)."

— Scott Belsky

"consumer (and prosumer) products ultimately succeed because of how people feel about themselves using them. Ego analytics, surprise and delight, and hooks to appeal to our laziness, vanity, and selfishness in the first mile of product experience are the biggest secret in product."

— Scott Belsky

"We’re all busy and skeptical of anything new. All products must (at least initially) capitalize on this truth rather than try to defy it."

— Scott Belsky

"That perceived performance matters more than actual performance (perception is reality when it comes to UX!), and can be achieved as much by designers than engineers."

— Scott Belsky

"the best way to review a product experience is to ask 3 questions on EVERY screen: “how did I get here?” “what do I do now?” “where do I go next?” — these questions will reveal flaws in object model, UX, onboarding, and orientation."

— Scott Belsky

"if you just keep telling, polishing, and retelling your strategy and story, you end up with the gem of the idea, the gem of the value prop for customers, and the core of what your product needs to be."

— Scott Belsky

"Disruptive products tend to be simple point solutions that doing one thing incredibly well. And then customers want to bring point solutions together (for value, for perceived benefits of integration…). And then 10x better (and simpler) point solutions emerge."

— Scott Belsky

"the most powerful (and affordable) driver of product growth is surprise, delight, and intrigue."

— Scott Belsky

"The argument to “just get something out there and start learning” is flawed in two critical ways: (1) You’ll burn early adopters fast if you don’t polish the few things that distinguish your product the most before launch, and (2) The natural tendency of every product team is to iterate around the MVP."

— Scott Belsky

"Launch the minimal required experience for everything but the parts that distinguish your product the most. Remember, a great MVP favors top customer needs, very few customer wants. Optimize for the problems you want to have."

— Scott Belsky

"Most product leaders and founders I admire have partnered with a few incredible designers throughout their career, and doing so made all the difference."

— Scott Belsky

"you only get what you inspect, not what you expect."

— Scott Belsky

"Share the news when you want it to be news, but don’t agonize over the timing. In fact, you don’t want all of the attention when something launches…you want it when you’re ready for it."

— Scott Belsky

"the best new products ultimately take us back to the way things once were, but with more scale and efficiency."

— Scott Belsky

"New technologies that provide some sensation from the past while enjoying the benefits of the modern world (cities, travel, remote working etc) tend to succeed."

— Scott Belsky

"the outcome of your work is determined by timing just as much as other variables. Timing is worthy of our respect and attention."

— Scott Belsky

"At any point in time, companies have a unique set of needs and opportunities (and insecurities)."

— Scott Belsky

"Like meeting a loved one, a great match is as much about timing as it is about capabilities and shared values."

— Scott Belsky

"To lead an industry, companies require different leaders (or different leadership styles) at different times."

— Scott Belsky

"one of the most important lessons I have learned over the years is waiting for process to unfold. Achieving a vision without breaking the system requires periods of generating buy-in, exhaustive testing, and allowing time to pass for ideas to sink in and folks to get on board."

— Scott Belsky

"Pacing is important, and most new ideas should be killed for the sake of focus."

— Scott Belsky

"Only the best leaders can maintain healthy incrementalism while imposing the occasional transformational jolt when needed."

— Scott Belsky

"The inevitable outcome of any business governed by incrementalism is a limited market size because the local maximum (the closest hill) becomes the limit."

— Scott Belsky

"Given the criticality of timing, incrementalism kills too many great ideas by pushing them to fruition too late."

— Scott Belsky

"some new ideas are inflections and must be executed in full before they function. The best teams know when to do this and can reorganize to pull it off."

— Scott Belsky

"Investing is a discipline focused on the future that can only be determined by the present."

— Scott Belsky

"forecasts for the future (a good exercise for everyone) should be grounded with a deep and accurate understanding of present day problems and humanity at the moment."

— Scott Belsky

"My criteria for investing at the right time is whether the team is attempting to defy a likely outcome or make it happen in a better way. I invest in the latter."

— Scott Belsky

"The best teams I come across are parlaying forces already underway to their favor. They are grounded by the present and are capturing a tail wind."

— Scott Belsky

"I’ve been a seed-stage angel investor since 2010, focused on helping early-stage companies in the consumer, marketplace, and “transformation by interface” space"

— Scott Belsky

"Product - specifically crafting the first mile, structuring a design-driven product team, blending copy and UX, optimizing the defaults, considering ego analytics, and other fun stuff."

— Scott Belsky

"Narrative - positioning is as important for the team’s perspective of their own product as it is for external marketing. A product’s story matters."

— Scott Belsky

"I admire teams that value initiative over experience."

— Scott Belsky

"the science of business is the things that scale, the art of business is the things that don’t. I help teams find their way through THE MESSY MIDDLE."

— Scott Belsky

"I support mission-driven teams that value design, exceptional product experiences, and are solving a problem by connecting and empowering people."

— Scott Belsky

"The best teams I come across are parlaying forces already underway to their favor. They are remarkably imaginative yet grounded by the present. They are driven by empathy for those suffering the problem rather than passion for one particular solution. They are optimistic about the future but pessimistic enough about execution. And they are never ever satisfied with the current state of their product."

— Scott Belsky

"Recommendations kills Favorites: AI-driven recommendations transcend our historical go-to’s."

— Scott Belsky

"The Era Of Multiple Identities: We Discover, Embrace, & Express Our Multiple Selves"

— Scott Belsky

"we’ll look back and realize that compiling and repeatedly leveraging a list of “favorites” was complacency"

— Scott Belsky

"Life is short, and the more we limit ourselves to “favorites,” the less likely we are to discover better experiences. AI does this."

— Scott Belsky

"I firmly believe that professional fulfillment will increasingly be the result of feeling fully utilized."

— Scott Belsky

"The desire to generate income and feel fulfilled from multiple projects will increase retention"

— Scott Belsky

"Brands are now collectively determined by the content generation of the masses as opposed to a creative agency and a nationwide ad buy."

— Scott Belsky

"we still crave the ancestral “small town” of reputation and brands built on trust. The consensus in real-time from individuals on social media is powerful."

— Scott Belsky

"We all want to be known, but the benefits must exceed costs."

— Scott Belsky

"“ads” conjures up the era of annoying banner ads and pop-ups. But “personalized experiences” are the new advertising, and most of us would prefer it whether we admit it or not."

— Scott Belsky

"technology at its best takes us back to the way things once were — but with less friction and at a far greater scale"

— Scott Belsky

"We’ll want ai-driven immersive experiences to know us well, but not at the expense of our security and comfort. As always (at least in my mind), design is the solution."

— Scott Belsky

"There is a generational shift in values and trade-offs: people would rather work together with greater latency than work faster alone."

— Scott Belsky

"The last era of social networks tolerated and (at best) accommodated pseudonyms, but the next era of social networks will be optimized for the fact that every participant will have multiple identities."

— Scott Belsky

"It made me realize, perhaps true meritocracy of ideas is only possible without the historical anchors and biases of a singular identity"

— Scott Belsky

"What do these next gen social platforms share? They combine ephemeral sharing with lasting reputation building, they lean towards default transparency and with a more liberal interpretation of “privacy,” and they have fewer creative constraints and are geared to reward those with the most creative self-expression."

— Scott Belsky

"Talent will increasingly own their audience, with the rise of “channels of one” and community-as-a-service."

— Scott Belsky

"Suffice to say, the future of social is exciting and, contrary to popular belief, will not be constrained to today’s dominant social networks."

— Scott Belsky

"The pursuit to “own your own audience” will be a macro trend over the coming years."

— Scott Belsky

"But now, as bots and algorithms supplant mundane and repetitive labor in the workplace, the benefits of human labor will shift to the skills and capabilities that are uniquely human. Chief among them: creativity."

— Scott Belsky

"We see this massive broadening of the market divided into two types of personas: content-first creators and collaboration-first creators."

— Scott Belsky

"the explosion of SaaS offerings for everyday work (enterprise trend noted above) and life is setting the stage for a new problem and opportunity: How do we stitch it all together?"

— Scott Belsky

Crafting The First Mile Of Product | by Scott Belsky | Positive Slope | Medium

"In the first 15 seconds, your visitors are lazy in the sense that they have no extra time to invest in something they don’t know. They are vain in that they want to look good quickly using your product. And they’re selfish in that, despite the big picture potential and purpose of what your service stands for, they want to know what will immediately benefit them."

— Scott Belsky

"you feel the greatest impulse to jump back into a social product (whether it is for work, or for personal use) after you’ve just posted something for others to see. Why? Because your ego is on the line."

— Scott Belsky

Crafting The First Mile Of Product | by Scott Belsky | Positive Slope | Medium

"In all successful networks (and most other tools) I have seen, an immediate novelty or utility precedes the larger promised benefits."

— Scott Belsky

Crafting The First Mile Of Product | by Scott Belsky | Positive Slope | Medium

"Having to explain your product is the least effective way to engage new users (and explains why products like Photoshop struggle to attract non-Pros)."

— Scott Belsky

Crafting The First Mile Of Product | by Scott Belsky | Positive Slope | Medium

"The users of your product don’t want to make choices, especially when they are in the first mile."

— Scott Belsky

Crafting The First Mile Of Product | by Scott Belsky | Positive Slope | Medium

"Again, life and new products are hard enough. When you can use a familiar term instead of being original, do so. Never opt for a solution that is more creative but less effective."

— Scott Belsky

Crafting The First Mile Of Product | by Scott Belsky | Positive Slope | Medium

"The first mile of a user’s experience is the top of your funnel for new users and needs to be the most thought-out part of your product, not an after-thought."

— Scott Belsky

Crafting The First Mile Of Product | by Scott Belsky | Positive Slope | Medium

"For any product with aggressive growth aspirations, I’d argue that 30%+ of your energy should always be allocated to the first mile of your product. Even if your user experience for new users is performing well, don’t forget that new types of new users are the real source of growth."

— Scott Belsky

Crafting The First Mile Of Product | by Scott Belsky | Positive Slope | Medium

"It’s a paradox of success: As you focus more on power users, you stop engaging new users. The sad reality (and the opportunity for start-ups) is that most established products take their large userbases for granted and fail to maintain simplicity over time."

— Scott Belsky

Crafting The First Mile Of Product | by Scott Belsky | Positive Slope | Medium

"The next generation will have a nomadic decade of life and work, and will love it."

— Scott Belsky

"“F’ The Man, Power To The People” As A Service"

— Scott Belsky

"Rather than compulsively saving playlists that i discover and love on Spotify, I’ve surrendered myself to the algorithms."

— Scott Belsky

"The next generation of top talent will have “Polygamous Careers,” transforming the corporate world as we know it."

— Scott Belsky

"(1) I am most happy when my many interests and skills feel fully utilized — both professionally and personally, and (2) in the modern hyper-networked world that gives us all broad exposure to fuel our many interests, fewer of us can be singularly defined."

— Scott Belsky

"The desire to generate income and feel fulfilled from multiple projects will increase retention (you don’t leave a job if your “other interests” are being fulfilled elsewhere), increase workplace productivity (no more face time…people will be busier and more efficient), and help many projects and companies engage top talent that would otherwise be out of reach."

— Scott Belsky

"What tools will help us set and measure objective key results and performance in such a distributed world?"

— Scott Belsky

"My hope for the future is that more people will enjoy the benefits of “Tune-In Jobs” (where you are deeply engaged with the work you do) vs. “Tune-Out Jobs” (where we’re more focused on the clock)."

— Scott Belsky

"The rise of immersive experiences will mainstream 3D creation."

— Scott Belsky

"Ultimately, what this actually means is that we will increasingly play games, connect with friends, and work with colleagues in a fully immersive space that we co-habitate in real-time."

— Scott Belsky

"HOWEVER, I know one thing for sure: Such experiences will be boring and fall completely flat unless they are filled with rich, engaging, three-dimensional, interactive, and personalized content."

— Scott Belsky

"With our efforts and numerous startups tackling this opportunity, coupled with the capacity of our mobile phone cameras to scan objects into 3D assets, we will all be creating in 3D as soon as immersive experiences go mainstream."

— Scott Belsky

"“The Stakeholder Economy” will reinvigorate emerging brands and local businesses and be the most disruptive force against internet behemoths and global marketplaces."

— Scott Belsky

"I’ve been thinking (and writing) about how this confluence of decentralization may advantage emerging brands and local businesses, and could prove to be the most disruptive force against the internet behemoths and global marketplaces that rule the world."

— Scott Belsky

"The second disruptive force at play is the construct of decentralized organizations turning customers (and employees) of businesses into owners."

— Scott Belsky

"We will all start to opt-in for ads [read: personalized experiences]"

— Scott Belsky

"My growing contrarian view about the trend of privacy and opting out of ads (especially for the next generation, who tend to prefer transparency over privacy) is that artificial intelligence will make personalization so damn incredible that opting out will be the equivalent of using an old flip phone or going to a restaurant and getting served a random dish."

— Scott Belsky

"We’ll want ai-driven immersive experiences to know us well, but not at the expense of our security and comfort."

— Scott Belsky

"I am fascinated by the rise of consumer products and networks that aim to remove purposefully imposed friction and conflict-of-interest business models, and I think we will see a lot more of this. The stock trading app Public emerged as a serious Robinhood competitor with their stance against “Payment For Order Flow” (a business model that can work against the interest of the consumer)."

— Scott Belsky

"All of these services aim to empower people that were otherwise passive participants in a system beyond their control. Such products not only help people but also hold governments and massive companies accountable."

— Scott Belsky

"Every function of the enterprise will become a multi-player and fully immersive experience."

— Scott Belsky

"Less discussed are the costs and trade-offs of multi-player systems — whether it is an app that becomes less performant as it becomes more collaborative, or a consensus-driven protocol on the blockchain that becomes less performant as it becomes more consensus driven (just another form of collaboration)."

— Scott Belsky

"The first stage of these products will be multi-player two-dimensional experiences. But I think we’ll quickly see them take on a third dimension. Imagine “walking through” your P&L and balance sheets, seeing the growth rate visualized, being able to “jump into” any particular customer or expense and feeling the runnings of your business in a fully immersive way."

— Scott Belsky

"And then there is the concept of “eduployment,” which I believe will be a major unlock for millions of careers in the coming years. Eduployment is the vertical integration of identifying a trade, getting an education, and getting a job or starting a company."

— Scott Belsky

"The reverse franchise model and “eduployment” will fuel growth and resilience of small businesses."

— Scott Belsky

"Those of you who read last year’s predictions know that I have been long fascinated with the model of individuals and small businesses getting access to the advantages of big businesses. Doing so is the only way to level the playing field and, perhaps, provide consumers with the advantages of both small businesses (relationships, service, local patronage) and big businesses (better user experience, scaled pricing, modern technology and interfaces, etc)."

— Scott Belsky

"Mexico-based Kolors approaches local family-owned buses in all the rural and urban areas of Mexico and brings them only the Kolors booking system alongside a fresh coat of paint and some branded materials to boot."

— Scott Belsky

"This is what I call the “reverse franchise” model, where existing small businesses join together to reap the benefits of a conglomerate while preserving some degree of autonomy."

— Scott Belsky

"Timing is the factor that is most absent in conversations I have with investors, with other leaders of products, and with fellow entrepreneurs."

— Scott Belsky

"As a generally impatient person with idealistic tendencies (I call it “process intolerance”), one of the most important lessons I have learned over the years is waiting for process to unfold."

— Scott Belsky

"Achieving a vision without breaking the system requires periods of generating buy-in, exhaustive testing, and allowing time to pass for ideas to sink in and folks to get on board."

— Scott Belsky

"But some new ideas are inflections and must be executed in full before they function."

— Scott Belsky

"The other key to timing is tracking the tail winds. My criteria for investing at the right time is whether the team is attempting to defy a likely outcome or make it happen in a better way."

— Scott Belsky