Speed is one of the most romanticised concepts in startup culture. When Mark Zuckerberg coined the phrase ‘Move fast and break things’ in 2010, he was referring to internal processes at Facebook. Nevertheless, it became a kind of catch-all mantra for those early tech giants. Disruption was key, and the faster the better.
But the thinking changed over time. By 2014, Zuckerberg distanced himself from this statement and, writing in the Harvard Business Review in 2019, Hemant Taneja (CEO of VC firm General Catalyst) noted that the public was already unhappy about giving tech startups a free pass when they overlooked the broader societal impact of their innovations. In other words, don’t move so fast that you break everything.
Yet, this obsession with speed persists. So, where do we go from here? Is the key to startup success launching as quickly as possible, iterating even faster, and beating the competition to market? Or is it, as Taneja argues, time to move from minimum viable products to ‘minimum virtuous products’, with founders demonstrating publicly their sense of responsibility for the consequences (including the unintended ones) that their ideas may create?
To put it another way, when should you move quickly and when should you be more cautious?
Careful selection
Essentially, moving fast in the world of startups is all about prioritising momentum over perfection. Ideally, you’re doing this without compromising the foundation you’re building, but it’s about understanding which things to accelerate and when to accelerate them.
The best way to protect your startup from the negative aspects of rapid growth is through the team you assemble. It’s not necessarily about the biggest team or even the smartest – it’s about getting the right one for your business.
If you can bring together a small but tightly aligned group of people who trust each other and move in sync with each other, you have the potential to outperform any number of larger, more fragmented teams. When you’re small, you can execute faster (without feeling rushed), and when you have chosen the right people, you can work with less friction and a shared belief in the direction you’re taking the business.
So, a great example of the wrong kind of speed is hiring the wrong person because you’re in a hurry. A great example of this working well is hiring deliberately while still moving quickly and ensuring you assemble a group with the right attitude and complementary skill sets.
The race to the MVP
We mentioned the idea of a minimum viable (or virtuous) product in the introduction. Many founders equate the concept of speed most closely with product development. The mantra is that you must get the product out to the public as fast as possible.
The next question is what exactly are you putting out, and why? Because speed, when it comes to products, isn’t necessarily about shipping fast, but instead having tight feedback loops. That’s a speed that can only ultimately benefit the product. The best founders build lean versions of their ideas (Minimum Viable Products, or MVPs) and gather real data from users as quickly as possible. But to be clear, the MVP isn’t a product that barely works – rather, it’s a carefully engineered experiment designed to validate a key assumption.
When it comes to product, moving fast is not about building the full dashboard, AI engine, and mobile app. Instead, create the one thing that proves whether the problem you’re trying to solve is real, that the solution you have come up with makes sense, and that people care enough to use it. As you iterate, the speed aspect is in how quickly you learn and then implement changes.
Is being first really that important?
There are definite advantages to being early. You gain first access to users, receive attention, and may even have an easier route to funding. However, getting there first doesn’t mean much if you simply become a test case for second movers who have learned from your mistakes and are presenting a better product and a more robust business model.
So, speed is not about winning the race to launch the product. It’s about essential learning and swift adaptation, even if that means a second launch. If you’re six months behind the first mover but you understand their users on a deeper level than they do, and you can deliver more value, you’re in a position to surpass an important competitor who shipped early but then stagnated.
Clearly, Facebook wasn’t the first entrant in social networking, and Google wasn’t the first search engine. But they were fast where it mattered, which means improving the product, scaling smartly, and constantly learning from the market.
Going fast
There’s no perfect formula, but here’s a way of approaching speed from a strategic perspective:
- Build that team: As we have talked about, a great place to start. Speed comes from alignment, which means you’re hiring people who believe in your vision and can adapt quickly.
- Validate the problem: Before you build anything, make sure the problem is real and worth solving.
- Test your messaging: Start experimenting with how you talk about your solution. What kind of language resonates best? What makes people pay attention or click? The good news is that you can test this before your product even exists.
- Build the MVP: Now that you’ve validated the problem and messaging, build a Minimum Viable Product. Not a complete product, but just enough to test your core assumptions with real users.
- Learn and iterate: Launch at the right time, but then iterate quickly and efficiently. Tight feedback loops are the key to real speed.
- Scale: Once you have product-market fit and a stable foundation, think about whether you want to add features, hire more people, or expand to new markets.
Embedding speed into your business culture
Moving fast is a cultural trait. It’s something rooted in how your team makes decisions and responds to uncertainty. Startups that value progress over perfection tend to move more quickly and have a greater impact. But as we have seen, this isn’t about ‘breaking things’ or being reckless. It’s about reducing the time it takes to make informed decisions and staying flexible enough to adapt when needed.
To build speed into your culture, you need to create an environment where small teams are trusted to act, and even when they fail, the feedback loop is quick and efficient, setting the team up for the next success. When you also avoid unnecessary meetings or bloated planning cycles, your team has a better chance of becoming both fast and focused.
Startups and the need for speed
As we have seen, moving fast in the context of startups isn’t about barrelling into a market with half an idea so that you can be first. For those founders who understand, it means being flexible, decisive, and willing to learn faster than your competition.
Speed comes from shipping only what matters and tightening your feedback loops at every turn. And while being first in the market is nice, it’s often the second or third entrant, or even later, that wins – if they are learning the fastest and adapting most effectively.
That’s what speed looks like in a startup.
