The New Product Tradeoff - Pick 4

The Pentagon of Promises

One day in the late 1960s, someone (we've lost track of who) drew a triangle on a whiteboard and gave us a gift: the idea that projects live under constraints. "Good, Fast, Cheap - pick any two," they said, and generations of software developers nodded in recognition.

This triangle served us well. It helped us have difficult conversations with both clients and ourselves. When someone insisted they needed everything perfect, immediately, and for pocket change, we could sketch this triangle and watch understanding dawn in their eyes.

Over the past few years, I've been noticing something interesting in the culture of startups. Many new ventures manage to build something successful that is actually good, fast, and cheap. As a founder, you almost have to ignore these constraints if you want to become a unicorn.

And yet, TANSTAAFL. Nothing is free.

So what changed?

I think this new pentagon captures it well:

Play with the toggles above - which dimension are you willing to sacrifice?

It turns out you can make things good, fast, and cheap - and many do - but the cost is often sustainability. (Or if you're in crypto, legality.)

Software consultants that gave the Pick 2 Triangle to their clients were setting a boundary: burnout is not an option, nor is ethics. That works when your competition has set the same boundary, but it starts to fall apart when they compromise on it.

Sometimes the compromise is big and visible: a fake blood testing product, customer fraud, IP theft.

More often, it's an invisible compromise: a delay in having children, a sacrifice of health, a wipe out of savings.

I imagine showing this pentagon to some colleagues, who would proudly point to "sustainable" or "legal" as their sacrifice. They'd say this with pride, like they've figured out how to hack the system. And maybe they have, for now.

But I'm more curious about teams who will take the time to stare at this for awhile. The ones who immediately recognize their own implicit tradeoffs reflected back. The ones who realize they've been unconsciously sacrificing something all along, and maybe it's time to make that choice with more intention.

Take another look at the toggles: what would you sacrifice? More importantly, what have you been sacrificing without realizing it?