First Principles Thinking & Product Design

Will Ahmed, the founder of the Whoop, a popular fitness tracker, wrote a great Tweetstorm the other day about the wearables space. In it, he demonstrated an excellent example of first principles thinking around building a product. I wrote a post about the importance of first principles thinking in company building a couple of years ago. I found this Tweet inside of the Tweetstorm from Will to be the most striking.

This is a perfect example of first principles thinking in company building that sets out a framework for product managers to make literally thousands of small (and big), follow-on design decisions. The increase in efficiency and speed of decision-making is nearly infinite when leaders think and communicate this way.

Not to mention, it’s also a great strategy. Very few products can remain “cool”, for everyone, for many years. Whoop knows this and from day one (it seems) they’ve been pushing to get closer and closer to invisible, while most of their predecessors have tried to be cool and stay cool. A strategy of being cool while working towards invisible seems like a far more sustainable approach.