Are You Ready To Ship?
One of Google’s tenets is “Fast is better than slow”.
The idea is that ‘getting to market’ i.e. shipping your product even if it isn’t perfect, is the most important thing. Instead of spending time nailing down every last detail, we need to put out a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and let the market tell us what needs to be improved.
This is a pretty standard idea in tech circles but it has just as much applicability in other startup spaces and across the established corporate world.
Of course, we have a natural desire to get things right and keep developing our product or service - adding a feature here, a bit of polish there - before we present our work to others. We don’t want to fail out of the gate, nor do we want to lose market credibility with something that is not quite there.
The counter to that is, of course, that we don’t have all of the answers. We don’t quite know what will resonate and what won’t - not in any exact sense. The market does, though, so it’s better to let the customer tell us.
Of course, this doesn’t mean we ship something shoddy - there needs to be basic functionality, and the product has to solve a core problem in a (more than) reasonable way. That, to me, is a given.
But maybe we hold off on the bells and whistles until we know the product works and delivers, embedding those upgrades as part of the product’s evolution, as it services a viable, accepting marketplace.
Of course, part of this decision has nothing to do with the product itself but rather with us and our own confidence.
Are we comfortable launching before we think we’re “ready”?
Are we prepared to face the market and what it has to say?
In other words, is our desire to be perfect related to the product, or to us?
Are we ready to ship?
