A Quantum of Utility

Paul Graham, in a Hacker News comment thread regarding yesterday’s DF essay:

“How small? How simple?”

We advise startups to launch when they’ve added a quantum of utility: when there is at least some set of users who would be excited to hear about it, because they can now do something they couldn’t do before.

Along similar lines, here’s a bit of sage advice from longtime DF reader Don O’Shea, who teaches optical engineering at Georgia Tech:

The mnemonic that I give my students for setting priorities for features in an optical design is NUN: Necessary, Useful, and Nice.

★ Thursday, 2 April 2009