and using that as the basis to build great teams, products and companies.

What is a great product?

The basis of building great products is building great experiences for people who use them.
The definition of a great product varies subjectively from person to person Great product = Great experiences
OR
Product = Sum of experiences

What is an experience?

An experience is not a single object or entity .. it is an ensemble Like eating in a restaurant .. its the expectation of experience, length of the waiting list, the ambience, the view from your table, the noise levels of your fellow diners, the sparkle (or lack of) of the cutlery, the tone and responsiveness of the waiters, the cleanliness of the toilets, and of course  .. the food. Reviewers (and now people on zomato) to quantify all of those along different lines and rate restaurants along different dimensions but all you remember in the end is how it felt “People don’t remember what you … they remember how you made them feel” Thats exactly how people experience products.
“User experience” is what defines a product to arguably its most important stakeholder .. its users.

Extend the concept of an ensemble into product

Product = Design + copy + price + speed + reliability + support + tone + Branding + perception + nature of competition Takes a lot to get a product right .. a lot of things have to be right for nothing in your experience to go wrong. However, most of us in possess a very singular view of what defines a great product. Design-loving folks look at usability and aesthetics.
Terminal hackers look at reliability and scalability.
WHOA-> “The customer experience has emerged as the single most important aspect in achieving success for companies in all industries” http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Customer_experience X folk think product rocks but Y may think product sucks and both are correct - they’re (different &) independent dimensions of a product. ^Defines user experience and thus product So how do we use that definition to make great products? So far line of thinking is so ..
Products are a collection of experiences
Delivering great product experiences depends on getting a  diverse set of factors right.

So how do we make a multitude of factors amazing?

Well you can’t get em all right, so pick the top 3-5-7 and get em awesome. But how can a product be awesome at a diverse set of things?
Products are shaped by diverse factors but each factor is controlled by a different team or person. Thus the problem of getting diverse parts of the experience boils down to  getting people diverse awesome to work on different parts of your product. This is manifested by “gene pool engineering” that Khosla Ventures does, watch this video from 10:10 and/or read about it here. Doing the above just reduces risk and covers your bases. You’re preventing your team from becoming a circle jerking band of yes-men.
The caveat? / Whats the catch? So bring a great engineer and a great marketer and you’re done 
.. not quite.
Doing the above just reduces risk and covers your bases.
There’s still the most fun part .. execution.
A whole new story and a whole new blog post.