Execution. What does it mean for startups?

Over breakfast one day, a friend told me how he had been really interested in the “curated/collaborative/content” space. Looked at a few. Got involved in one. And couldn’t really figure out how it had gotten so amazingly successful. Basically just “execution”.

Later, I understood what he meant by that was that Pinterest just looked awesome.

It wasn’t about ship dates, or closing deals, or crushing bugs.

It was a product comment about flow and looks and polish.

A sexy polished product probably just works better. (Footnote to PG.) Or at least the user will believe so.

And Pinterest looks great. So does TheFancy.

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But this isn’t just for bigtime startups. Two great startups that did well at TechCrunch this week LOOKED really truly amazing. Even though their functionality was far from mind-blowing. One of them even won the whole show. The design was distractingly good. You just had to marvel at it.

It’s these two:

Uberconference

Ark.com

Lesson: execute.