Quality of Execution = Success

One of the most challenging aspects of being in a startup is bridging the gap between creating a technology and turning that technology into a polished product. Many of the key skills which make a team good at creating initial technical software or systems also make it harder for that team to look at the product from their customer's perspective and focus on the elements which will actually make their creation usable by the customer.

Fitbit growth over the first few years. Quality of implementation and corporate focus helped a ton.

A key reason for this is that technical design is taught at most of our universities, but there are not any classes on how to design successful products. Therefore, everyone has to learn on the job or from a mentor what to do.

There are many companies who have been very successful with this in the last two decades.

IDEO - (Bring a better perspective) They decided not to hire normal designers. Instead, they hired biologists, writers, athletes, mothers, and anyone who would have a perspective which disagreed with everyone else they worked with. Their innovation was to force all of their teams to have a new perspective that no other company had taken, so the product that they created were different, and, because they were created from more perspectives, they ended up being better. If you have ever used the smaller shopping carts at a store, those were the result of an IDEO team rethinking shopping based on how real people interact and purchase things. Ted Talk
Nest - (Polish) This company has created 2 product in the last 3 years. One is a thermostat and the other is a smoke detector which talks to you rather than beeping when there is a fire. They were just purchased for $3.2B by Google. The reason is that they revolutionized an area by thinking about all the weaknesses in current systems and filling the need in an elegant, simple and (somewhat) affordable way which truly made people want to buy it.
FitBit - Made the clunky pedometer into a small, beautiful and easy to use device which you wear at all times. The innovation is that people now 'count steps' rather than guessing at calories.
Amazon - (Create it backwards) - At amazon, every new product starts with the final press release, then, the team creates the manual (or description) and FAQ. If this doesn't impress customers and coworkers, the product is never started. If it does, they then create the feature list and re-present their product to actual potential customers to identify everything they could remove from the product so they create the minimal set of features which will make the product great.
Apple - (Iterate and say no) - At Apple, the philosophy is to create 9 independent concepts or teams who are all tasked with brainstorming a solution to a new product, choose the best 3 and combine the best parts of each into a single final product. To make this philosophy successful, saying no to features
Netflix - Netflix has focused on 1 philosophy for selling their product - make it easier for people to watch movies at home. To do this, they have been very open to change and have listened to both customer feedback and identified new technology faster than other companies to improve their customer's experience. They started the revolution by mailing DVDs around the world when no one thought it was possible and then they were the first to successfully push online distribution of movies. What has made them successful is a focus on quality and making sure they are delivering what the customers want.
And many others...

There are other companies who have not embraced the idea. One example of this is, to a large extent, IBM. The company used to be the power house of new innovation and products in the technical fields, but when you talk to people about IBM products, they say that the products feel large, bloated, complex and expensive. Because people can find product which are tailored specifically to

So, how does this apply to creating products at startups?

Companies need to follow a solid philosophy to get to a good product.
Just having the idea did not make these companies successful. The quality of the execution of their ideas created their success.
The team matters most. Grow correctly, fail fast, fire fast and give real responsibility to people on the team.