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The saddest “just ship it” story (2020)

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

#211

Post by wpietri »

ChicagoBoy11 wrote: post #68

I've only ever "shipped" two independent projects, and they are the the best things I have ever done for myself in terms of development, both from a personal career growth perspective but even financially. I work at a nonprofit and I had done some ABSURDLY SIMPLE data analysis on a relatively annoying public data set to consume. I'd done it for our institution, but it was sort of straightforward to generalize it to a…

This is awesome!

And I want to add that the same applies if you ship it and it doesn't succeed. Because then you either learn that you're barking up the wrong tree or what to try next.

A decade ago I did a startup with a pal who is an excellent product manager. He had an idea that sounded great. So great that we actually raised some seed money. But when we built a basic prototype, it turned out people hated it. [1] That sounds like a bad outcome. But if it's not going to work, then the sooner you find that out, the less time you waste on it.

So yes, ship early and pay close attention to how people receive it.

[1] more here in a 5-minute Ignite talk he did on it: Here's a 5-minute ignite talk from him: https://vimeo.com/24749599

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

#212

Post by wpietri »

spamizbad wrote: post #66
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.…

This is extremely true. I think some people are "maximizers" - They will always do research to seek out the "best" for their given budget for even moderately priced purchases. Engineers tend to fit this profile, so its easy for them to get psyched-out when trying to ship a product. But people - and businesses - aren't always like this. They will buy what's available and seems to get the job done and seems like less o…

For sure. And I'd add that although engineers tend to be more prone to behave as optimizers, we are all optimizers for some things and satisficers for others.

If you're starting to sell a product, it's really valuable to spend some time thinking about areas in which you behave as a satisficer, a person who's just looking for "good enough". Maybe it's buying rice. Or apples. Or where you fill up your car. Or buying jeans or flatware or toilet paper. There will be some things where your goal is to devote as little time and attention to possible to make the choice. Where you just want it to work adequately for your purpose.

The truth is most people are in satisficer mode for most purchases, if only because we don't have the time to really dig in on everything. Thinking about one's product from a satisficer perspective can be really helpful, as they tend to value things differently. They can also be much easier to sell to and are more likely to stay loyal as long as things are going smoothly.

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

#213

Post by ZephyrBlu »

rozenmd wrote: post #61
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.

I'm sitting here running the 200th uptime monitoring service, laughing at the notion you have to be first to ship a solution to a problem. Build something good, that people want, and iterate rapidly as feedback comes in.

It seems a bit rich to say that when your SaaS has https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30427048

I'd say it's even contrary to "laughing at the notion you have to be the first to ship a solution to a problem".

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

#214

Post by jdmichal »

klysm wrote: post #147
ambicapter wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The money award helped pay for my entire grad school tuition. Is that what the award was...intended for? You maybe don't want to brag about that on the internet.

That’s what I was gonna say lol, pretty sure that’s not legal at all.

It's a grant from a private organization. It's at worst a breach of contract. And if he simply called it a salary paid to himself to continue development and marketing of the app, that probably successfully clears any hurdles.

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

#217

Post by bogwog »

goatcode wrote: post #204

Having experienced this very thing, I can say: there's a good chance the other guys had already made their app in some form long before this guy did. Don't worry, bro: everyone has had a cool idea (all of which are very cheap -- ideas, that is) and then seen someone else doing it later. The good news is this though: if you're dishonest and connected enough, you can still make your app succeed. Especially if it's wors…

> if you're dishonest and connected enough, you can still make your app succeed. Especially if it's worse than your competitors'.

Wtf is that supposed to mean?

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

#218

Post by bogwog »

jschveibinz wrote: post #120

“The MVP was ready in a few days. I'm not that good of a coder, it's just a simple app.” This sentence is incredibly important. If a MVP is ready in 3 days, then how valuable can that product be? When literally everyone has access to tools that they believe can result in something marketable in only a few days, then we have achieved the time when nobody makes money from software. Thoughts?

Flappy bird made more money than most games, and it can be created by anybody in a few hours.

If what you say is true, then the game industry should be dead right now.

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

#219

Post by cercatrova »

alin23 wrote: post #201
cercatrova wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lunar is a great app! I've been using it along with Vivid.

Thanks! Not sure if you’re aware but Lunar also has XDR Brightness: https://lunar.fyi/#xdr In fact the feature landed in Lunar before Vivid launched and it uses a different approach that increases the brightness for the whole system instead of only for what’s behind an overlay like Vivid does (although the overlay also has its own advantages like being able to only increase brightness for a single window etc. ) It ca…

Yep, that was why I installed Lunar as well. I was evaluating the various options, between Vivid, Lunar and BetterDummy since they all have the XDR feature.

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

#220

Post by dasyatidprime »

pflenker wrote: post #173
bambax wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "build it and they will come" I also used to think that build it and they will come was a big fallacy, but it's not really. The fallacy is, "build it and the whole world will fight to get what you built". That sure won't happen by itself or by chance. But if you build something reasonably good, some people will come. That may not be enough for you to make a living out of it, but it will make it worthwhile. > Learni…

Learning helps you pay your rent in the long run though, as it lifts your overall qualification level.

That can decay to ~zero from a career-agency standpoint though if it's not the limiting reagent for professional access to the next level—that is, if the assignments you can get next all include the same thing at the same speed regardless of whether you also learn it independently or not.
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