Like most everyone else in the tech world I spend a bit of time scrolling through TechCrunch; the news mecca of all things tech. I recently came across this article that was talking about the value of The Jerk. Yes, The Jerk. You know the investor that rips your business plan to shreds. The boss who tells you that your work is not good enough (in some cases without even having looked at the work).
It doesn’t feel good to be on the receiving end of what The Jerk is saying (or sometimes screaming). BUT you know what? We need more jerks, not less. Speaking from personal experience I have benefited greatly from investors that have played The Jerk that helped me become a better CEO. I have benefited greatly from bosses that have played The Jerk that helped me reach past what I thought were my limits. Even friends who have on occasion had to play the role of The Jerk when I needed to be shocked into trying to do better.
And while the term Jerk is a great journalistic metaphor for getting a valuable point across, the reality is that I don’t consider any of those people that pushed me, a Jerk. Its easy to label them as such because in today’s world it’s shocking for someone to speak their mind and tell you something is crap. We expect to be coddled and told how awesome we are even when everyone knows we could do so much better.
The article got me thinking about our customers as well. I appreciate all of our customers. After all, each of them pays us and allows us to continue to re-invest in growing our company. BUT WE LOVE THE JERKS. The ones that push us to do better and won’t stand for anything less than what we know we are capable of. I go into their boardrooms to present a new feature expecting to be congratulated for another job well done, and 8 times out of 10 that is exactly what happens –the other 2 times they tear me and the company to shreds. They won’t accept good enough. They push us to go back and do better, and we do. Even if that means throwing away a lot of hours of design and development work. We don’t like it, but it’s the right thing to do.
It seems contrary, but its those customers that we constantly seek out. To beta test new features. To share our road map with.
They push us to do better, and because of that we do better and deliver better product and services. We are nowhere near perfect (and we never will be), but because those customers are in our corner we are always striving towards it.
So, to all The Jerks out there, (especially those of you that we count as our customers), thank you.