When to delegate product & marketing?

When founders ask me about delegation, I tell them about the time I worked with Steve Jobs.

"Matt, can you send over a copy of the landing page? Steve wants to review it before our launch.”

This was 2004, we were launching PayPal in the iTunes store.

"Good news! He only had one tiny change. Instead of offering three free songs to PayPal signups, we need to offer eight.”

He was right, of course. Site ops pulled an all-nighter to make the change, and the launch was a huge success.

Why did Steve do that?

Why would the CEO of an $8B company with 12,000 employees personally review a partner’s landing page for a payment method in a secondary product? (PayPal’s CEO certainly never asked to see it!)

Here's what I've come to understand about how Steve chose where to focus:

1. He was obsessed with first impressions. He didn't review everything – only the touchpoints that would be a customer's first contact with an Apple product. (Like a PayPal user buying their first song on iTunes.)

2. He saw products with fresh eyes, as if he knew nothing about Apple, to spot things that didn't make sense.

3. His edits were almost always reductive. Simplicity was religion, he removed anything that wasn't essential.

Even when Apple had massive brand equity, they still sweated first impressions.

Simple next step

If you don’t have Apple’s brand equity, and I’m assuming you don’t, first impressions are even more critical.

First impressions need to be perfect. Can someone on your team view things with “fresh eyes?” (That could be the founder, but it doesn’t have to be). Either way, check every first impression before it ships.