Why Ask Why

The other day, something happened that made me think about a counterintuitive aspect of building software. We were discussing a new feature—nothing fancy, just a couple hours of work. Then someone asked the "why" question. That changed everything.

In startups, there's a bias towards action. We see a problem, we build a solution. It feels productive. But are we sometimes too eager to build?

Asking "why" is a powerful move, but it's also dangerous. It can kill projects or reveal gold mines. The tricky part is that it's often harder to answer than to ask.

Here's the thing: we can't always figure out why we should (or shouldn't) build something just by thinking about it. Sometimes we have to build it to know.

This reminds me of the old Facebook motto, "Move fast and break things." People often misinterpret this as recklessness, but it's really about learning quickly. Every "broken thing" is a lesson we couldn't have learned any other way.

So maybe we need a new motto: "Build to learn, not just to ship." This reframes building as a form of inquiry. Every feature becomes an experiment—a way of asking "why" through action.

This doesn't mean we should stop thinking before we code. It means we should see action and reflection as two parts of the same process. Build something quickly, show it to users, then ask: "Why did this work (or not)? What did we learn?"

The key is to keep these experiments small and frequent. We shouldn't spend a month on a feature we're unsure about. Spend a day on a prototype. The feedback will probably answer our "why" question better than any amount of discussion.

The goal isn't to stop asking why. It's to answer it more effectively. By treating our builds as experiments, we can discover the "why" (or "why not") through real-world feedback, not just speculation.

So next time we're about to start a new feature, we should pause and ask why. But let's not let that question stop us cold. Use it to design a quick experiment that will answer the question through action. We'll probably be surprised at what we learn—and how fast we learn it.