Does a Product Have to Be 10 Times Better?

Rob Snyder says he does not know about the idea that a product has to be 10 times better than the existing solution for anyone to care, and that idea does not register for him. He looks at how stuck people are with the options they already have, whether they are a coiled spring, and how they respond when he shows up.

When generic AI note takers do not get the job done for financial advisors and Jump does, Jump is infinitely better, because it unblocks the work. The case put to him is that Linear often wins over Jira because the experience is beautiful, smooth, and well crafted, and engineers like using it. For the pull framework, what would have to be true is that someone trying to do issue tracking is blocked by Jira, so Linear’s better experience is actually relevant. Pull theory would say there was that kind of person, blocked by Jira’s experience.

He made the mistake of taking the Linear analogy into HR software and expecting a much better experience to crush the category. The user experience was not relevant to the buyer. They had no pull and did not care that their systems still looked like COBOL.