Quality: The Neglected Cornerstone of Building Things that Last

When I think about quality, I don’t think about numbers and specs. I often think about a feeling. When something just works. And when you’re never once second guessing whether it was worth it.

In a world of MVPs and growth hacks, we often talk about speed, product-market fit, or scale. Quality somehow gets mentioned less.

Maybe because it is harder to measure, or because it takes longer to build. But it is often the thing people remember long after they’ve forgotten what you were selling.

What is Quality, Really?

qual·i·ty (/ˈkwälədē/) noun

the standard of something as measured against other things of a similar kind; the degree of excellence of something.

The definition of quality in the dictionary fails to adequately describe what it means in the world of entrepreneurship, in my opinion. Quality is a feeling. It is the sense that you have not been cheated, that what you hold in your hands (or experience through a screen) was built with care and a desire to serve you well. Further, it is not like anything else. It is different.

An experience that highlighted this for me recently was using Canva. I have been using it a lot to produce designs and graphics for an upcoming conference. I always get surprised with new abilities and features that I did not know I needed until I did, such as filling letters with an image. It’s precognitive, it knows what you want to do before you do it.

There is this quote I like from a music critic describing Frédéric Chopin’s music as the following:

‘It is as if one knows instinctively what comes next, yet without his writing it, one would never know what comes next.’

I could not think of a better way to describe his work.[1] Similarly, your software, your product, your service needs to know what your customer wants before they do.

Can Quality Be Measured?

Honestly, I am not sure. Quality is about craftsmanship, constant experimentation, and lots of restarting. The ability to create is inborn, but flowers only with years of the most uncompromising hard work—which many of us, including myself, are still learning how to embrace fully.

When it comes to metrics, there are plenty that help businesses track satisfaction: Net Promoter Score, customer retention, churn, lifetime value. All of them have their place, but metrics don’t always tell you the whole story: whether someone truly loved your product. They don’t tell you if someone felt proud to recommend you, or if they’d be sad to lose you.

A better metric might be Michele Ferrero’s, the founder of the Ferrero Group (Nutella, Ferrero Rocher, Kinder). Ferrero famously avoided traditional advertising and marketing, especially in the early years. He believed that the product’s quality should speak for itself, and that word of mouth was the true test of merit.

This is an unconventional path, I don’t know if I’m brave enough to follow it yet. But it speaks to a deeper principle: that quality is not just what is built, but how it endures, how it spreads in whispers, in recommendations, in reputations.

Things to Take Away

Map a Single Customer Journey in Full

Ferrero had Signora Valeria: the Italian mother doing the family shopping, the imaginary customer he built everything for. It’s not supposed to be a real person, but an idea. What do they want? Where do they feel unsure? Where do they hesitate? What would make them feel understood?[2]

Write Direct to Consumer

In an increasingly corporate world, write directly to your users. I remember buying a Paperlike a while ago and getting a note from the founder Jan as an early customer. I remember it made the interaction very human. I’ve been a customer since.

Offer a No-Questions-Asked Refund or Other Guarantees

This is a suggestion from Alex Hormozi’s $100M Offers: How To Make Offers So Good People Feel Stupid Saying No.[3] What guarantees me your product will work? Make people feel safe buying from you. Safety builds trust. Trust builds loyalty.

Start a ‘Founder Review’

Every week, connect with 1–2 real customers to ask about their experience. Read the support emails, try the onboarding yourself, and feel the edges of your product.

Remember that quality in a startup is paramount, because it forms the bedrock upon which an establishment is built and is the metric by which your customers will judge you.

Notes

I forget where I read this critique. I searched everywhere and came up without luck. If you know the source, feel free to let me know.
I recently underwent this exercise for our product, and what a delight it was. I mapped out every little detail about my avatar, from their psychology, environment, wants, desires, insecurities, to the feeling of success, and worked backwards to then develop the features and products we have.
This is a genuinely good book and I highly recommend it to anyone looking to understand how to build better offers that will convert.