Here's the brutal truth about product development: the market rewards scale, but users fall in love with soul. And these two forces often pull in opposite directions.
Soul is what happens when you pour care, love, and attention into every detail of what you build. Scale is what happens when market pressures demand growth, profitability, and predictable outcomes. Most companies think they have to choose one or the other. Steve Jobs proved you can have both.
What soul actually means
Soul isn't some mystical concept. It's the tangible result of caring deeply about your product. Jobs captured this with his carpenter analogy: even the back panel of a chest of drawers, which nobody sees, gets a beautiful piece of wood instead of cheap plywood. "You'll know it's there," he said. That hidden craftsmanship? That's soul.
In product terms, soul shows up as thoughtful details, consistent vision, quality beyond minimum requirements, and genuine care for user experience over internal metrics.
The scale pressure
Markets have different priorities. Investors want growth. Competitors force you to move fast. This creates predictable tensions: feature bloat, quality compromises, metric optimization over value, and lost focus.
Look at Uber's journey. It started as a premium ride experience with nice cars and smooth UX. Post-IPO, it became cluttered with ads and inconsistent quality. The market reshaped it into something efficient but soulless.
Getting it right
Apple maintained its soul while becoming the world's most valuable company. Jobs insisted on hiring people who "want to make the best things in the world." Even at massive scale, Apple prioritizes design excellence over quick wins.
Airbnb faced this tension during 100x growth but doubled down on trust and community. They created the $1 million Host Guarantee and had employees personally visit unreviewed listings. Care at scale.
How to maintain both
- Hire for passion: Skills can be taught, but genuine care can't be faked
- Protect core values: Make them non-negotiable when market pressures demand compromises
- Sweat invisible details: Like Jobs' carpenter, quality in unseen places matters
- Stay close to users: Fight the distance that scale creates between builders and users
- Say no more than yes: Every feature should align with your core mission
Why this matters now
In an era of rapid change and AI, soul creates the emotional connection that keeps users loyal through transitions. Anyone can build features quickly, but soul is what makes products irreplaceable.
The choice is yours: build something users love that happens to scale, or build something that scales that users happen to tolerate. Only one creates lasting value.
Sources: Insights from Stanford Commencement Address 2005 and Soul vs Scale.
