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The saddest “just ship it” story (2020)

kitze.io

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Re: The saddest “just ship it” story (2020)

#41

Post by OJFord »

karterk wrote: post #22

> My app is officially dead. Most markets are large enough to accommodate several businesses. There's really no reason to stop working on something just because you find that there is already someone solving that same problem. Who knows, they will shut it down at some point, or might head upmarket or pivot to a tangential area.

And especially if the would-be competitor is so crap, as described? I don't really understand the leap from 'oh something like this already exists but it sucks' to 'no point shipping any more my life is over blog about it instead'.

Re: The saddest “just ship it” story (2020)

#42

Post by lbriner »

pflenker wrote: post #3

A big fallacy that I always see - and that is implied by this post - is that the work ends after shipping, a.k.a. "build it and they will come". That doesn't happen any more. So after you "ship" it, you need to promote it, advertise it, create buzz around it and make people use it. And that is a totally different kind of beast than coding something. But on the flip side, if you develop a side project just for yoursel…

I think like others have said, it does depend on whether you are targetting the mass market or a smaller (and hopefully more lucrative) niche.

Plenty of companies don't do what you say and still become successful.

However, for a pure software solution with little market expertise, I suspect what you are saying is correct because the barrier is so low. If you can "build an app" in a weekend, so can 1000s of other people.

Re: The saddest “just ship it” story (2020)

#43

Post by johnhenry »

masto wrote: post #34

Mine was when the iPhone SDK was released. I’d made a small Mac thing and gone to a few WWDCs, and really wanted to be an app developer. I brainstormed some dumb ideas, but one day I was meeting up with some friends in the city and while waiting for them to show up, I thought “there should be an app for this”. It felt like I got a lot of blank stares when explaining the idea to people, but I went ahead and built a pr…

Don't feel bad. Even if you had continued with the idea, it may not have worked. In 2013 there was a company called "Twist" that invited users to share their location temporarily so that co-workers could know if they would be on time to meetings. At some point they shuttered most of their employees and decided to pivot into bitcoin as "BitGo". (Note that https://twist.com/ is an entirely different company now).

I joined shortly after the shuttering. One funny thing was that the company still owned twist.com and would continually get emails for an unrelated sex club, twistsf.com.

Re: The saddest “just ship it” story (2020)

#44

Post by samhw »

c03 wrote: post #38
SamBam wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could see that distracting from the main point. Then it becomes "Why were you solving that problem?" "Why did you insult their app, it's really great!" "The author's right, no one should use app X." It's not the point of the story.

It's not really a story as it is now though. Someone did something better than this guy. It's just a stream slightly coherent gonzo ranting.

In other words, a story? An account of something that happened to that person? Does he have to state the names of every road he was on and every cafe he went to?

I like this site, but the one thing I'll never understand is the outrageously entitled attitudes of so many people when it comes to free content, like fat and delirious blog-reading Ubus.

Re: The saddest “just ship it” story (2020)

#45

Post by lbriner »

nashashmi wrote: post #28

My only comment here is you got to have thick skin if you want to follow this advice. Once you ship it, you will get a hundred compliments, and thousands of critiques (mostly from the jealous people). When you don't have thick skin, you don't ship. Ever.

So true. I think my biggest negative when it comes to the idea of running a business is that thick skin. Not so obnoxious that you don't take feedback but realistic that opinions are free and come thick and fast!

I think this also plays out when people are always comparing themselves to their competitors instead of just concentrating on what they are doing well. Just because "Big Company" does it, doesn't mean it is worthwhile and that they won't pull it in 6 months when they realise they created something useless!

Re: The saddest “just ship it” story (2020)

#48

Post by llampx »

frontman1988 wrote: post #18

Being a solo dev on some app/website is not really worth it these days. There was a time when you could single-handedly create a million dollar app in some niche. But now the competition has increased so much that you need VC money or atleast a team if you want to create any impact whatsoever.

If your only KPI is "Am I at unicorn valuation yet?" then yes, but I'm sure you can do well being a small fish in a big pond. There are still underserved markets out there. Find your niche and build your product around it.

Re: The saddest “just ship it” story (2020)

#49

Post by onion2k »

lbriner wrote: post #39
onion2k wrote: post #25

"Maybe this is actually obvious, but it's still a common mistake in startups so I'll say it - you don't have to believe your product is good to start selling; you just have to be better than not having the product. You don't even have to believe it's the best, or believe it's complete, or even like it. People will happily give you money for anything that makes their pain point slightly less painful." Me, 3 hours ago.…

I wouldn't quite agree that people will happily give you money for anything that makes their pain less. There is still oboarding friction, possible import issues, fear of vendor lock-in etc. I think it is something that is easy to describe in theory, "ship what people want", "pivot quickly" etc. but the truth is most of us think we have solved a problem with our product but as soon as the first customer says, "I woul…

There is still oboarding friction, possible import issues, fear of vendor lock-in etc.

My point isn't really about the customer - it's about the startup, and the belief that you'll get to where you want to be eventually. Every single reason a founder can come up with not to be out there selling like "The product isn't finished", "It needs feature X", "It's not fast enough", "It needs better design", etc is wrong. No matter how bad your product is, if it's enough to solve the problem a bit then someone will pay for it. Any improvements you can make after that just increases the number of people who'll buy.

The fun game of running a startup is to make sure you're finding enough customers to make enough money to pay for building new things that enables you to find more customers, until you're big enough to either be self-sustaining or exit.

Re: The saddest “just ship it” story (2020)

#50

Post by cushychicken »

onion2k wrote: post #25

"Maybe this is actually obvious, but it's still a common mistake in startups so I'll say it - you don't have to believe your product is good to start selling; you just have to be better than not having the product. You don't even have to believe it's the best, or believe it's complete, or even like it. People will happily give you money for anything that makes their pain point slightly less painful." Me, 3 hours ago.…

We are our own worst critics, and that truth prevents so many dope ideas from becoming real.
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