Whenever a new venture starts, the benchmarks for quality are always set very high. Clearly, anyone who starts a new venture wants it to be the best in the world.
In some cases where the product/service is an established one, very often, it's because the startup is a reflection of the founding team's own aspirations and sense of self. "If my friends experience my product/service, I want them to feel comfortable since it is my company". The risk with this approach is that the product spec gets defined by the founding team's background and not by what the market can really bear.
In other cases, if it is a new product/service, there is no well-defined quality standard. Customers also "dont know what they dont know" - and are therefore not able to define the quality spec upfront. In such cases, the founding team is forced to go for "excess quality" in order to ensure that they are able to sign-up customers quickly and get the business off the ground.
While this approach helps get early customers quickly, it also requires higher resources (people/money) to be able to deliver the excess quality that has been spec-ed into the early orders. The startup needs to be well-resourced to survive the excess quality route. Else, the gap between the business plan and the actual market reality (of delivering on the excess quality promise reqd to meet the business plan projections!) can start hurting very badly.
Over time, as the service/product stabilises and the team gets very specific feedback from customers, it is easier to start defining the specific value parameters and recalibrate the excess quality to a more realistic quality level.
Here's my shot at explaining this visually:
The T - Time axis - can vary depending on the business. It could be the 1st 10 customers - or could be a few days depending on the cycle time of prospect-sale-service delivery - feedback - negotiations for service renewal.
So, on the whole, is excess quality a bane or boon? I dont think startups have a choice. They just have to put a stake in the ground. A stake that customers are willing to pause and listen for - as well as think it is something that is deliverable.
Not having customers is not an option. :)
