I once asked a famous celebrity chef how he made his pasta taste so good.
He answered “Butter. Lots of it.”
When we land in Paris, jet lagged and cranky, we head right to our favorite street cafe and order strong coffee, baguettes and butter. And our systems are restored.
Butter is one of my life’s treasures. I love it.
Butter is also something we look for in the products and services we invest in at USV.
My partner Nick coined the term Butter, at least inside of USV, and he wrote about Butter on his blog recently, explaining what it is and why we look for it.
I particularly like this part of his post:
On the consumer side, Butter means end-user experiences that are frictionless and joyful. For example, I recently went to China and was blown away by the QR Code experience — straight butter wherever you go, linking the real world to the online world. Duolingo is Butter for Learning. Nurx is Butter for Health. Coinbase is Butter for Crypto. Amazon Prime is Butter for e-Commerce.
https://www.nickgrossman.is/2019/the-butter-thesis/
Nick provides some good guidelines on how you can make your product or service buttery in his post.
We look for buttery products and services to invest in because customers look for buttery products and services to use. It is really that simple.
So when you design and build your product or service, make it buttery. That will lead to all sorts of good things.
