Don’t get mad when people don’t use your startup

Not many full-stack devs I know have put out their own mixtape. To be fair, I haven’t either. But my childhood friend did. Honestly, it wasn’t that good. We both knew it, and thank god he didn’t make us play it all the time.

Many first-time founders lack the sensibility that Travis—my childhood friend—had. I was guilty of this too. I’d build an app and want people to use it. I’d pester, and wow was I annoying. It’d be like if Travis made me listen to his album every time we got in the car.

When we didn’t, and instead put on Celine Dion (just kidding), we’d both get it. Travis wasn’t offended. Why should he be offended? It was just something he made. It wasn’t him. And later he would release a mixtape I ended up really liking, and that I would bump in my car.

The difference would be if Travis were offended. If he thought me not liking his mixtape with jungle sounds and loon calls was something personal. That I "didn’t get it” or worse “that I didn’t get him."

This is something that a lot of founders feel. They feel like because you’re not using whatever heinous thing they built that you’re somehow insulting their intellect or their vision. You’ve insulted them.

And for sure, that does hurt when people don’t like what you’ve made. And some (not cool) people will judge you for that.

But if app developers or founders took the mentality that musicians do when you don’t play their mixtape, and instead just got back to the music and made it better, it’d be a better world.

And, like Travis, when you do put out your second mixtape, your friends will want to try it.

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