Of course we always thought that what we did was right solution. When someone criticized it, it was a natural instinct to defend it.
You have to remember the environment we were in. When you are building a product, everyone wants to give you advice on how to do it. It is often very difficult to tell a good suggestion from bad one when you are in the thick of it. The most effective way we found to filter out good from bad was to mock up the suggestion (no more than 1 hour). We then looked at the before and after and tried to make a decision based on what we observed. The hard part for me was keeping my emotions and ego out of it and allowing myself to think clearly about what is the "right" solution.
Robby and I both were from Phoenix before moving to Mt. View. I make regular trips back and am always interested in meeting up with fellow entrepreneurs ([email protected])