Science & Tech Quote by Shawn Fanning

There is a very Silicon Valley kind of honesty buried in Fanning's almost comically generous use of the word "excellent": the product is broken, but the signal is loud. The line reads like a founder remembering the early Napster era (or any scrappy beta) when usefulness and dysfunction coexist, and the community still shows up anyway. That juxtaposition is the point. He’s not bragging about polish; he’s spotlighting obsession.

The intent is to reframe failure as traction. "Even when the software didn't work at all" isn’t an apology so much as proof of demand: if people are fighting through a bad experience to keep using it, you’ve found a real itch. The subtext flatters the users while also elevating the feedback loop as a core product feature. Those "avid users" aren’t customers in the traditional sense; they’re co-conspirators, early adopters who help define what the thing should be before it can reliably do what it claims.

Context matters because Fanning’s legacy sits at the collision of technology and culture. Napster wasn’t just an app; it was a social rebellion packaged as a utility. In that world, bugs are tolerable when the underlying promise feels bigger than the interface. The quote also smuggles in a philosophy of iteration: ideas arrive before infrastructure, and community can act as the scaffolding. It’s a reminder that the most disruptive products often begin as imperfect permissions to participate, not finished services to consume.