Product teams forget the context of the “build for yourself” spirit that they discount in favor of data-driven decisions. And this has tragically obscured their potential for actual visionary work.

Here’s how: It’s not “building for yourself doesn’t shift paradigms.”

It’s “building for yourself doesn’t shift paradigms if you are already the main character.”

Product, design, and engineering teams are overwhelmingly led by people who are already main characters in tech.

So those main characters building for themselves DOES produce incrementalist, weak-willed, un-visionary work.