Don't wait for the perfect product
Today I was having a chat with one of the startup founders I advise. She wants to apply to a couple of accelerators but she is waiting for all the bugs in her app to be resolved first.
This approach is not the best one in my opinion, considering the complexities involved in modern software development, your app/product will always have some types of issues, so it is better to march forward as soon as your app/product is fulfilling a set of basic use case. You never know what feedback you get from the market so better go live with half cooked things instead of waiting for the perfect product to be built.
Love this! It does depend on the product though. You must get to MVP.
In general, yeah "perfection is the enemy of progress", I agree. That said, it really does depend on the product, and how prominent the bugs are.
If there are bugs disrupting key user workflows or they're visually very obvious, then they can produce a poor first impression and a lack of trust, which can be particularly harmful if the startup is of a financial nature for example.
But yeah, if, like me, you find yourself delaying a launch because the colour or alignment of an error message, you should probably take stock :)
As with everything one-size does not fit all, its likely to depend on the product, the bugs, the industry, perhaps the competition, just to name a few.