Day 11 - Just ship! (but not really)

When you are building and presenting to others you start to hear the same advice over and over again: 'just ship', 'just focus on one thing and do that well', 'that market is saturated', 'security isn't that important'.

ok the last one is made up, but its a byproduct of just building and not caring. the one that bothers me the most is the 'just ship' one. no I am not building this just to ship. I am building something that I am interested in building. and the minute you ship, is the minute that you have to maintain a project. before you ship, that pressure is not there. maybe some people need the pressure to continue - but not everyone.

The advice I think should be 'build what you are interested in building, but the minute you see an opportunity to ship, do so'.

I had this moment yesterday while I was reviewing the different flashcards for different goals (I am building a wellness flashcard recommender system powered by a knowledge graph). And I thought, 'ok these different storylines make sense and could really help beginners or people that don't have time to think about what to do'.

And as much as I want to build out all the features that would support a flashcard - e.g., 'do a workout' = use my workout library and log a workout - well maybe the flashcards themselves can be enough of a starting point for me to ship.

And so I think I will. I will ship with what I am working on right now + my existing features. And the rest I will release across time. I do need to think about pricing strategy, however. But yeah my 'shipping date' just moved up by a few months :)