zlacker

That's kind of wild to me to see an app like Figma that's a commercial success, but also a demonstration of technical excellency. My brain automatically assumes that you can't pick both commercial success and technical excellency at the same time and must compromise on the latter to build more features. But maybe there is hope and users actually love the benefits of a better tech stack (performance, consistency, stability) and maybe it's easier to build features with an excellent technical foundation.

>>antoin+(OP)
> My brain automatically assumes that you can't pick both commercial success and technical excellency at the same time

The problem is your anchor point. Your idea of what software can and should be is based on? Gmail? Salesforce? The GTAV loading screen? The iOS warning that you’re running out of icloud storage space?

Silicon Valley software expectations are tainted by recency bias and private equity excrement.

The current ceiling to aspire to is literally “CI passes”

>>antoin+(OP)
Your assumption was correct most of the time. 99% of tech startups are not innovating technically. They are applying existing tech to new problems. In these cases, quality engineering is low priority.

But there is that other 1% that is making new things possible. And if they are extremely lucky, they’ll build new tech and figure out how to turn it into a product. Figma is an example of what can happen when that mix hits.

Most technical innovations, though, will be licensed/sold/etc. to other companies which fall into the first group.

All that said, it turns out customers love software that works well. Startups (and most software companies, really) undervalue quality because it’s hard and not strictly necessary when there’s no direct competition.

>>antoin+(OP)
Sometimes commercial success is due to technical excellence. Especially in overcrowded fields just being better is enough.