Don't be afraid! Ship it!
Hi everyone!
I often read Indie Hackers saying they got projects they never released.
I know that feeling, and it's both the hardest and simplest wall to overcome.
You always want to add that last one feature, get that button 1px perfect, find the right text, or even {select the last excuse you used}. ;)
It's easy to use excuses to never release our projects because the truth is we are afraid. We are afraid that it won't work, that it will receive negative feedbacks or worse ... go unnoticed!
But guess what? The best way to go unnoticed is to never release it!
So for once, be crazy, and ship it. Ship it as is because it's the best there is today, and you will improve it tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow, until you'll look back in the future and say "wow, it was doing just that, and now that I have tons of customers and so many features, I don't believe all it took was just to push the send button!"
Truth be told, that's what I just did with PDFShift (an API to convert HTML documents to PDF with a few lines of code). It's not completely finished (the payment system is not ready yet, so don't upgrade it! haha), but at least is live! That's something!
I'm afraid as hell it won't grow, but I pushed through and I shipped it... and you should do the same!
So go hit that send button! :)
I shipped https://www.launchfactory.io/ .
I've got over -700 revisions- in the bank over a 1 month period.
I tried to develop a friendly light interface and finally created something in 20 min that I liked. It's still yet to be fully refined.
But Cyril is right. You need to get it out and get feedback before you can really get comfortable with your product or service.
Thank you and good luck with LaunchFactory!
What really helps if you get some customers / beta users first. Don't open it up to the public, but ask people, that could potentially be a customer, to try the product.
This is easier to "sell" and less scary. Another side-effect of it, is you start with having actual users, which makes it more exciting to work on.
Yes, you are absolutely right. I think I'll post a "Ask IH" about getting feedback on PDFShift today.
Moreover, this gives the owner users that will accept when things brake and help identify issues quickly, so it's 100% a good thing to do!
Hello @cnicodeme . Thanks for your nice words . I had a project and I never released it as I was thinking I should hire a designer then will release it. After your post I host my domain to my server and put my codes there. Thanks for showing this concept (Just ship it).
here is the live part www.gouikit.com
My post made you do the switch? That's awesome!
You don't have to wait for it to be perfect, it's not written in stone :) You can improve it while having it live, and, as @tohmasch said, getting feedback from your users to improve it even more :)
Yes your post made my product live.
I am really nervous. I just setup my kubernetes cluster and have everything ready for a beta..
Tomorrow I will tweak some things in the copy/documentation and then release my first usable product. Really hoping to get some users so that I can improve based on feedback!
Go for it. Good luck!
https://wiseer.io it's up now! Love to hear your thoughts :)
Wow the design is really nice! Congrats!
Now is the hardest part: go promote it, mention it, make it known!
Good luck!
Thank you so much! :)
Yeah, it's gonna be a challange! If you know anyone who might be interested in trying it out, you know where to send them :)
That's great, I'm happy my post made you take this decision. I hope for you it will work as great as you want it to be :)
Good luck!
https://wiseer.io it's up now! Love to hear your thoughts :)
I just finished reading Austin Kleon's Show Your Work where he talks about redefining what is showable or rather shippable. If you think of sharing the process of what you are doing or your project in its infant stages as a worthy unit of shipping a lot of these fears can fall away. I haven't applied this idea myself to software or business yet but I can still see the connections. I think the popular strategy of sharing a landing page before building anything is similar to this- it might not be the so-called finished product but something got shipped.
Thanks for sharing. Ship it first and then iterate. That’s exactly what MVP means.
The funny thing is, I have a side project that I’ve been working with on weekends for 4 years (2100+ hours) ^_^ Not a simple one but it tries to resolve some big problems of my own. I validated the idea by reading lots of discussions in different forums/posts. I’m confident that some users will like it because they have similar problems.
I will work on it full time after Aug, and plan to release a beta version soon after that for a small number of users to try. I guess I could find a few IH users here because people in this community are very supportive.
I'm glad it made you motivated enough to release it in a few weeks! The key word is persistence so good luck! :)