The Wright Brothers & Software Startups

The Importance of Getting the Sequencing Right

In the years leading to their famous first flight, The Wright Brothers engaged in a great debate about sequencing. OK, the debate wasn’t about sequencing per se. But getting the sequencing right was a major reason why the Wright Brothers beat the competition to make one of the seminal breakthroughs of modernity. Bear with me, but I think this has an interesting parallel to software startups.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, the conventional approach to achieving manned flight was to build an airframe, add an engine, insert a human pilot, then go. According to Wikipedia, the longer-tenured early aeronautical investigators:

built powerful engines, attached them to airframes equipped with untested control devices, and expected to take to the air with no previous flying experience.

The sequencing was: airframe → engine → pilot → mechanized flight

The end goal of mechanized flight was clear. The requisite steps were understood. On the other hand, the sequencing of the steps was not so clear. The conventional path of flying with an engine and little piloting experience led to tantalizingly close calls, yet never delivered success.

In contrast, the Wright Brothers focused on iterating with an engine-less airframe. They went to the sand dunes of Kitty Hawk for a forgiving environment to learn piloting. Wilbur Wright had spent countless hours observing birds, yielding the critical insight that birds were master aeronauts who learned how to control their wings in order to fly.

The Wright Brothers got the sequencing right. First, they would learn to control their airframe. Then, with sufficient mastery, they would add an engine to their airframe. Then, they would attempt mechanized flight. The sequencing they chose:

Airframe → pilot → engine → mechanized flight

It can be lonely when taking an unconventional approach to sequencing - before Kitty Hawk, the Wright Brothers were generally regarded as misguided or simply ignored. However, their approach yielded a dominant path to innovation by dramatically:

• Shortening feedback loops while significantly increasing the time spent field testing vs. lab testing

• Reducing the hard costs of expensive engines and lab testing, giving the self-funded Wright Brothers more time in Kitty Hawk to practice controlling their glider

In the final analysis, much of the Wright Brothers’ success as innovators can be attributed to their agile, highly efficient process - fruits of getting the sequencing right.  

What does this have to do with software startups? Ambitious software startups generally have the same end goal in mind - disruption. We can look at the most disruptive software companies, see their components, and have a good understanding of the end state.

The strategic challenge is not in knowing the requisite steps for disruption, it’s in getting the sequencing right. For bottoms-up & product-led software startups, I think the key sequencing move of the most successful disruptors has been a heightened early focus on product differentiation. This means pushing out a focus on sales & revenue growth while focusing on rapid feedback and incremental product improvement.

Similar to the Wright Brothers’ decision to delay using an engine, startups that delay pursuit of revenue growth are delaying a critical sequencing step. It’s not easy! Foregoing revenue heightens a startup’s already significant financial pressures. It also requires making forward progress without a key source of external feedback. But it can be done - Figma started in 2012 and didn’t have first revenue until 2017. I can imagine that there were some lonely moments on that unconventional path to disruption. Yet we now all can see that they got the sequencing right.