Foundry is a premium business intelligence publication featuring 551 articles from the best founders and investors. Topics cover leadership, strategy, fundraising, growth, AI, and more.

What topics does Foundry cover?

Foundry covers leadership, investing, AI and technology, product development, founder stories, mindset and career, marketing, hiring, fundraising, strategy, and more. Articles feature insights from founders like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Sam Altman, and Jensen Huang.

Can I submit a story to Foundry?

Yes. You can submit a story at thefoundrybrief.com/submit. Foundry publishes articles featuring insights from founders and investors across all industries.

Michael Seibel: How to Run a Product Development Cycle in One Week

By Michael Seibel · Product & Building · 1 min read

YC's CEO says most startups take months to ship. He wants them to ship every single week.

Key Points

One week cycles: set goals Monday, ship Friday, learn over the weekend
Monthly or quarterly cycles are too slow for pre-PMF startups
The faster you ship, the faster you learn. That is the entire game.

If your product cycle is longer than a week, you are moving too slow.

The Weekly Cycle

Monday: set goals for the week. What will you ship by Friday?

Build Tuesday through Thursday. Ship Friday.

Weekend: look at the data. What did users do? What broke? What worked?

Why Monthly Is Too Slow

If you ship monthly, you get 12 learning cycles per year.

If you ship weekly, you get 52. That is 4x more chances to find what works.

At the pre-PMF stage, learning speed is everything.

We released every three months. For a web product, that is horrible. We didn't write anything down.

The Discipline

Weekly shipping requires ruthless scoping. You cannot build big features in a week.

Good. Small features shipped fast beat big features shipped slowly.

The discipline of weekly shipping forces you to break problems into solvable pieces.