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Bijan Sabet: Obsession with detail

Earlier today, Foursquare announced and released the #allnew4sq. You can read all about the many and vast improvements on their blog post.

Short version: It’s awesome.

The thing about this release is that it’s been in the works for a significant amount of time. A lot of thinking, hardwork, sweat, determination and pain went into this release. There was talk at one point about whether it made sense to rush something out the door for SXSW this past year as they have done in previous years.

This time the decision was to take the required time, rip apart the existing app and start over. It was a massive undertaking to surface new things and improve many existing things.

I’ve been using the private beta for the last few months. It was amazing to watch all of the attention to detail and the polish that went into every new build that I received every few days. It’s clear this team loves and cares about their community and their app.

We see the same inspiration and obession with detail in other companies as well. Earlier this week, Twitter announced a new version of their famous little blue bird logo.

There was nothing wrong per se with the previous logo, but the new one is simpler and more beautiful. Clearly, the Twitter team thought they could do better with their logo which is already widely recognized around the world. This refinement tells us they care about everything they do. At least that is what it tells me.

These two recent examples are great lessons for all of us. Take pride in your work. Pay attention and get obsessed. Don’t settle.

Congrats to Foursquare, I love the #allnewfour4sq. Well done team.

(disclosure: our firm, Spark Capital, is an investor in Foursquare and Twitter)