Shipping Beats Perfect - Why Getting It Out There Wins

"Let's polish it just a bit more before launch." You wouldn't believe how many projects that sentence has killed. Mine included.

Perfect is an excuse to postpone shipping

Of course it looks unfinished. To the person who built it, there's an endless supply of rough edges to sand down. The problem is that by the time you've sanded them all, both the energy and the timing for a launch are gone.

• You perfect a feature nobody ever looks at
• What users actually wanted turns out to be something else
• You learn too late that months of effort were pointed in the wrong direction

Users don't see the details

Cold truth: your first users won't notice the animation you stayed up all night refining. They see exactly one thing.

"Does this solve my problem?"

The answer to that question can only be heard once your work is out in the world. No amount of thinking in your room will produce it.

Ship the embarrassing first version

There's a famous line: "If you're not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you've launched too late." Here's how I put it into practice.

1. Make exactly one core thing work
2. Cut everything else ruthlessly and push it to later
3. Ship it, watch the response, and set priorities from there

Daily Wave started out truly bare. One challenge a day - that was the whole app. Revivals, difficulty levels, rankings - all of that came after people started playing.

So, today

By the time it feels finished, you're usually already late. Hold your breath at around 70% and push it out. Users will tell you about the other 30%.

That project sitting in your drawer - how about shipping it this week, embarrassing as it is?