The Overengineering Trap

If you're a startup CTO building an MVP, chances are you've got a background in software engineering. If you're like most software engineers, you love building things (I certainly do!)

And when building things, they obviously need to be perfect. When integrating authentication, for example, obviously you should support all the SSO providers. Google, GitHub, even Netlify. Surely someone will use it!

The overengineering trap has sprung. It's easy to dive into the details and get excited by all the technical possibilities, because we're builders after all, but it's absolutely vital to always consider the perspective of the customer instead.

If you're building a product for B2B retail customers, for example, what are the chances they have a Netlify account to log into your app with? I'd wager zero. They'll most likely still rely on email and password.

The tech person will say: Well, actually, passkeys are a good replacement for email and password and you should be using that instead! Consider the business case instead. Your job is not to convince people to use new forms of authentication, but instead to convince them how much value your product adds to their daily life.

You can't do that if they can't even log in.

Yours,
Søren