I've built a lot of things that didn't work.
Platforms that crashed under load. Features that users ignored. Architectures that seemed brilliant on paper but crumbled in production. Every failure taught me something. And after years of building, breaking, and rebuilding, I've developed a philosophy about what makes digital platforms actually perform.
Not just technically perform—though that matters. But perform in the way that counts: delivering real value to real people at scale.
The Performance Paradox
Here's something counterintuitive I've learned: the platforms that perform best aren't always the ones built by the best engineers.
They're the ones built by teams that understand their users deeply.
Technical excellence matters. But it's table stakes. The platforms that truly outperform are the ones where every technical decision is informed by genuine understanding of what users need, when they need it, and how they'll actually use the system.
This is the performance paradox: you can't optimize what you don't understand.
The Four Dimensions of Platform Performance
When I evaluate platform performance—whether it's something we're building or something I'm advising on—I look at four dimensions:
1. Speed Performance
This is what most people think of when they hear "performance." Page load times. API response times. Time to first meaningful interaction.
Speed matters more than most teams realize. Every 100 milliseconds of latency costs you users. Not hypothetically—measurably.
But speed isn't just about raw technical optimization. It's about perceived speed. A platform that shows meaningful content in 500ms while loading the rest feels faster than one that shows nothing for 400ms then everything at once.
2. Reliability Performance
The fastest platform in the world is worthless if it's down when users need it.
Reliability is about more than uptime percentages. It's about graceful degradation. It's about clear error handling. It's about systems that fail predictably and recover automatically.
3. Scalability Performance
Can your platform handle 10x the load it has today? 100x? 1000x?
Most platforms are built for current scale, not future scale. This works until it doesn't.
4. Value Performance
This is the dimension most teams miss entirely.
Value performance asks: Is the platform actually delivering the outcomes users came for? Are they accomplishing their goals? Are they coming back?
The Architecture of Performance
After building platforms across multiple domains, I've converged on an architectural philosophy that consistently delivers high performance:
Separate concerns ruthlessly. Every component should do one thing well.
Cache aggressively, invalidate precisely. The fastest request is the one you don't have to make.
Push computation to the edge. The closer you can process data to the user, the faster everything feels.
Design for observability. You can't optimize what you can't measure.
Building something that needs to perform? The lessons I've learned—often the hard way—might save you some pain.
