Just a quick thought today to mull over. Those of us who build stuff….
….whether this is programming or some design tool or simply a book that will help someone with whatever problem they have…..
….whether this is an e-commerce store, a blog, website…whatever…..
We like to feel like our ideas or creations or plans are fully realized. But things change. Ideas evolve. And creations sometimes take on responsibilities that you never thought of. Things we think we have a full handle on or a vision for rarely appears the same as our vision a year or two down the road.
This is one of the reasons why if you have an idea, you should run with it, make it good enough, publish it and then worry about perfection later.
Another reason is that while most envision product completion as an “ending”, it is actually just the beginning. Successful businesses wake up every day and look for ways to improve their product. Daily. How to reach more people? How to deliver the message better? They search for ways to segue into verticals. Who else can they affect? How can they make the processes more efficient?
But the biggest reason why you should ship early is that you have time to improve your product. There’s this misconception that once something is finished, there will be lines of people that can’t wait to buy your product (or idea or brand). The reality is that this rarely happens. Freshbooks is a good example. They spent the first 3 years with a total of 10 customers before they started to gain traction. That’s a year and a half of R & D and then 2 years of nothing. The bottom line is you have the time.
And if you can buy into that, you would understand that the hardest part of building a business is letting it go and allowing it room to breathe and grow on it’s own. But you have to start with selling something. And that something is the stickiest point because most are not satisfied with good enough (even when it is).
That’s what I believe at least. We should all ship early.
image attribution- Jason Short
Related posts:
- Re: Selling Shovels for the Latest, Greatest Thing
- Is Guest Blogging a Good Strategy for Traffic?
- Amazon Paid Ads Strategies (A very Good Video)
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