The Gradient of User Value
April 10, 2025 • #Saw this from John Carmack today on X:
Feedback beats planning.
My plea at Meta was “No grand plans, follow the gradient of user value”.
I love this. If you just keep persistently pushing up the gradient toward more value, it’s winning in the long term. Durable and sustainable success is that which happens gradually.
This reminds of a conversation I was just having earlier today about Fulcrum and our positive net retention. Our product fit was good enough that no one ever left. That didn’t mean infinite growth or hockey-stick revenue, but it created a durable foundation from which to grow gradually.
With the bottom-up adoption model, the continuous shipping of new features, and modest evolution of pricing and packaging with time, that combo enabled a gradual climb up the gradient.
You don’t always need that comprehensive 5-year strategy doc or holistic product redesign or earth-shaking press release. You just need that next nugget of feedback on the adjacent missing links in the value chain that you can iterate toward solving.
Keep climbing the gradient, and success will follow.
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