One of the biggest reasons a startup flops isn’t because the product the founders built isn’t good, it’s because they waited too long to launch it. My most important piece of advice is to:
Get it out there, even if it’s rough around the edges.
Shipping it early lets you validate your idea, hear what actual users think, and tweak your MVP (minimum viable product) based on the real world.
The Problem with Waiting Too Long
I’ve seen this play out in my own projects. When a product stays in “development forever”, founders miss the opportunity to learn from real users, lose interest, or a competitor can beat you to market.
Every week you spend polishing your features is time you could have spent learning from users.
This is especially true for early-stage startups, where speed of learning matters more than perfection.
If your public launch is still six months away, consider a soft launch or closed beta one to two months in advance.
Invite early adopters, gather feedback and start building your community, before launch.
Why Founders Are Afraid to Launch
Most founders don’t wait because they’re lazy.
They wait because they care.
They see the bugs.
They see the rough edges.
They know it’s not ready.
And they don’t want to be judged. So they keep polishing.
But waiting delays the most important part of building a startup:
Learning from real users. Launching early feels uncomfortable. You know things aren’t perfect.
You launch anyway.
Perfection is a Trap (Especially for Technical Founders)
I get it. As a technical founder when you know how to improve something, it’s easy to get stuck in that cycle.
One more tweak. One more feature. One more improvement.
But a startup doesn’t grow from perfect code or flawless design. It grows from real people interacting with the product.
Instead of trying to launch the perfect version, focus on launching a version that works.
Just good enough. Keep it simple.
Real Feedback Beats Assumptions
Founders often build based on what they think users want, but those assumptions are just guesses.
Real users may behave differently than you expect them.
They click things you didn’t think mattered.
They ignore things you spent hours building.
That’s the feedback you can’t simulate.
And it’s the only feedback that really matters.
Why Early Users Are Gold
Your early users will reveal problems you never expected.
They show you what actually matters, and what doesn’t. Things that may feel obvious to you might not be obvious to them at all.
Their feedback helps founders build products that people truly want instead of relying on assumptions.
Soft Launches Reduce Risk
Launching early doesn’t mean releasing the project to the entire world immediately.
Many founders start with a soft launch or closed beta.
This allows you to test the product with a smaller group of users, gather feedback, fix issues, and improve the experience before a larger public launch.
What I love about soft launches is that you can start building an early community around your product.
ShredSpots: Shipping Under Pressure
When I launched ShredSpots, a skate spot discovery app, launching early helped me learn quickly from users.
The first version of the app took me about two months to build. I set a personal goal to launch by July 4th. I was nervous. I wasn’t even sure if I would be able to finish it in time. And I had already posted the launch date all over social media, so the pressure was higher.
I felt like dropping in on a ramp for the first time.
You hesitate. You overthink. And then you commit.
I knew it wouldn’t be perfect. But that deadline forced me to focus on building only the core features, instead of trying to make everything perfect.
The early version of ShredSpots was simple, but it solved a problem for skaters: finding new places to skate.
Instead of waiting until everything was polished, I released it and started seeing how the skate community interacted with it.
Seeing how people used the app helped shape its development, and it eventually grew to over 100,000 downloads before being acquired in 2021.
ShredCam: Two Weeks From Idea To Launch
I also experimented with smaller projects along the way.
In 2020, I noticed a problem. I was filling up my phone’s storage with skate clips I didn’t even keep.
That’s when I got the idea to create a camera app made specifically for skateboarders. I called it ShredCam. I gave myself two weeks to launch it.
The goal was simple: Record the clip. Only save it if the user chooses to.
Everything else came later.
It was a much simpler project, but it taught me how quickly you can go from idea to product when you focus on solving a single problem.
Looking back, that experience changed how I build products.
Launch early.
Focus on the core.
Learn from users.
That’s the mindset I carried into everything I built after.
WhattaEat: Launching Early on a Bigger Scale
After ShredSpots, I started working on a much bigger project with my co-founder: WhattaEat. A social community based on food to help people discover what to eat.
It felt like putting a new dish in front of people.
You don’t know if people will love it until it’s actually served.
At the time, it was tempting to keep adding features, but we knew launching sooner would help us learn faster.
That decision forced us to focus only on the core experience.
As the technical founder (and solo developer at the start) building WhattaEat, a video-first social food discovery platform, I followed the same approach of launching early.
Before publicly launching the app, we released an early TestFlight build once the core features were working: the video feed, map, and user profiles. That helped us find bugs much faster than we could have on our own.
We later quietly released the app to a small group of users before the official launch which helped us gather feedback and start building a small community early on.
After launching early we quickly started seeing users upload videos, engage with likes and comments, and share food locations – which confirmed we were solving a real problem.
Ship Early, Learn Faster
Launching early isn’t shipping junk. It’s starting the learning process sooner.
The faster you get your product in front of real users, the faster you can improve it.
For founders, progress doesn’t come from waiting until everything feels ready.
Set a deadline. Ship it. Then pay attention to what your users actually do.
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