Most founders obsess over polished launches and market-ready products. They pour months, sometimes years, into perfection before showing anyone. Kevin Ryan, the mind behind Business Insider and MongoDB, flips that script entirely.

Sam Parr, host of My First Million, recounts Ryan's counter-intuitive strategy: launch with "shitty quality," grab market share, and then relentlessly improve. It’s a battle plan for disruptors, not perfectionists.

Key Takeaways

  • Forget the myth of the perfect launch; Kevin Ryan's playbook for Business Insider was to start with deliberately "shitty quality" content.
  • This approach, likened to how Honda challenged General Motors in 1985, focuses on gaining market share with a low-cost, basic offering.
  • The true genius lies in continuous, cost-controlled improvement: you steadily elevate quality over time without raising prices, outmaneuvering incumbents with higher cost structures.
  • Shaan Puri calls it "huntification," a process of starting with something rough and making it incrementally "less shitty" until it competes on value.
  • This entire philosophy is codified in Kevin Ryan's 'Start Shitty, Get Better' Strategy.

The Kevin Ryan's 'Start Shitty, Get Better' Strategy

This method outlines how to aggressively enter a market and outcompete established players by prioritizing initial market penetration and continuous improvement over upfront perfection.

  • Step 1: Start with Shitty Quality: Launch a product or service with initially low quality, but good enough to attract users or traffic.
  • Step 2: Maintain Low Cost Structure: Ensure the cost to produce or deliver the product/service remains constant or decreases.
  • Step 3: Continuously Improve Quality: Over time, steadily increase the quality of the offering without significantly raising its price.
  • Step 4: Outcompete on Value: Win market share by offering increasingly higher quality at the same low cost, making the value proposition superior to competitors who may have started at higher quality but also higher cost.

When This Works (and When It Doesn't)

This strategy shines in markets ripe for disruption, especially where incumbents are slow-moving, overpriced, or complacent. Sam Parr pointed out that Business Insider deployed this against the Wall Street Journal, making “content a lot cheaper” but believing their “quality is just going to continue to rise.” It's perfect for gaining an initial foothold through affordability, then gradually building an unbeatable value proposition. The key is that the initial "shitty" isn't unusable—it's just unpolished or basic. It's a calculated gamble on user patience and the power of iterative improvement.

However, this approach falls apart in markets where initial trust, safety, or luxury are the product. You can't launch a "shitty" medical device or a bargain-basement private jet service and expect to survive. Furthermore, if your "shitty" product is genuinely broken or provides zero value, users won't stick around long enough for you to improve. This method demands relentless execution on the improvement front; you can't just start "shitty" and stay there.

What to Do With This

Stop trying to build the perfect product in a vacuum. This week, pick one new feature or product line you've been delaying because it's "not quite ready." Instead, apply Kevin Ryan's 'Start Shitty, Get Better' Strategy.

Walk through it: Step 1: Define the absolute bare minimum version of that feature that still solves a core problem for some users. Don't worry about the UI polish or every edge case. Launch it to a small, forgiving segment of your audience or even internally. Step 2: Ensure its development and maintenance costs are rock bottom. Use existing tools, minimal custom code. Step 3: Immediately collect direct feedback. Then, commit to improving it weekly—not quarterly. Release a slightly better version every seven days, addressing the most painful feedback points. Step 4: Keep the cost (or internal "price" if it's an internal tool) the same. Watch as its value rapidly outstrips the effort, and you build something genuinely useful far faster than your perfectionist peers.