Sip some coffee and ponder on this for a sec…
I know you probably hear this all the time as devs but we should constantly be reminded of this as we start new projects and work on existing ones. There are a lot of studies that show that projects launched before they are perfect are better off in the long term because feedback is acquired while building, instead of after. So here are a few things you can apply to your projects starting today to help you launch quicker without feeling like your work isn’t “good” enough.
1. Launch your MVP without fear
Fear comes in all shapes and sizes and can creep up quickly and have compound growth as time goes on. It could be the fear of someone hating your product. The fear of pushing bad code to production. The fear of bad comments or reviews. Just know there is no need to fear because most of these things never happen, so don’t hide from a not promised future.
2. Save the features for later
It is really easy to work towards your MVP and notice opportunities for improvement and include them in as a requirement for your MVP. As your feature / opportunities list grows your MVP turns into a feature heavy project that no one asked for. So much time is wasted on this list. The MVP should only be items required to solve the problem and once the problem is solved leave the “cool ideas” for later or until multiple customers request it.
3. The Sooner the Better
You could wait until the “perfect time”, but better, you could launch now and build to the perfect time. There are a lot of benefits to launching now. Gain feedback, generate your first dollar, acquire customers, validate ideas, validate the market/audience. Did I mention you can generate revenue in the process??
In my years of running an agency and working on side projects, I have found that launching NOW is better than launching never. To my surprise, your potential customers have very low expectations. Just look at Craigslist. Anybody remember the first version of Facebook? They launched solving a couple problems and everybody loved it. Most of us would never launch something that looks as simple and bad as Craigslist, but the difference is they launched and iterated versus, iterate and never launch. Now please understand I am not vouching for the current versions of Facebook or Craigslist but the difference is we have an opinion about them, and no one has an opinion on the idea you never launched, so go be a billionaire, and just launch already!
Let me know your thoughts on launching or share a project you’ve been sitting on that you haven’t launched yet! I’ll go first -> http://app.thenextbill.com
I hope you enjoyed this, I speak way more on Twitter if you’re into that kind of thing! https://twitter.com/christoph_codes