“Quality is the best business plan.”
– John Lasseter, Pixar Animation Studios
Most of us have this backwards, though.
Too often, we treat quality like a bonus. Something to revisit once we’ve launched, scaled, or “proven traction.” Quality isn’t what you sprinkle on once things are working. It’s the ground you stand on.
The Paradox of Quality
Here’s the funny thing: starting with quality feels slower, but it actually makes you faster. We learned this the hard way. In the early days, we rushed features out the door. Bugs piled up, support tickets exploded, and every step forward sent us two steps back.
Eventually we realized: Speed without quality isn’t speed. It’s a slowdown in disguise.
We shifted focus. Building fewer things, but building them well. The result was that users trusted the product more. Our inbox got quieter. Progress finally felt like progress. This isn’t about perfectionism, though. It’s about asking: Am I proud to sign my name under this?
Living Quality in Small Moments
Quality isn’t declared in a meeting or pitch deck. It shows up in the tiny things.
A developer rewrites their code to make it more readable, even if nobody asked. A designer thinks about usability from the first sketch. A team member gives honest feedback instead of letting issues slide.
It’s harder. It means saying no to shortcuts and putting in effort you can’t measure in this quarter’s revenue.
But here’s what happens: the developers code becomes easier to maintain. The designers work serves more people from day one. The team trusts decisions more because they know where they stand.
The Math of Quality
And here’s the math of it: each choice compounds.
Quantity adds.
Quality multiplies.
Every time you hold the line, you make it easier to hold it next time. Every customer who feels the care in your work tells others. Every system you build to prevent sloppiness saves you from fixing the same mistake again.
Take Patagonia. They could cut corners to sell more jackets. Instead, they obsess over materials. Customers keep them longer, pay more, and tell others. That’s quality compounding.
Your competitors can copy features or prices. They can’t easily copy years of refusing to cut corners. When enough people make that choice consistently, it stops being a choice at all. It becomes culture.
When Quality Becomes Culture
In my experience, the best teams don’t have “quality initiatives.” They just work in a way where quality is the default. It starts small. One person who won’t ship something they’re not proud of. One leader who changes the question being asked.
In our team, that’s Mario. Instead of “Can we ship it?” he asks “Is this our best work?”
Small shift. Big difference.
Then it spreads.
Playing the Long Game
In a world of MVPs and fast pivots, quality can feel like swimming upstream. But that’s exactly why it works.
While others are stuck patching bugs and chasing technical debt, you’re building on solid ground. It’s not about being careful or risk-averse. It’s about being intentional. Knowing that how you build the first thing shapes everything that follows.
The question isn’t whether quality matters. It’s whether you’ll start with it. Whether you’ll choose the path that feels slower but moves you faster.
Because later never comes.
