How I almost broke my business by going too fast

2 years ago, I launched a habit tracker app inspired by the strategies mentioned in the Atomic Habits book.

I built the app for iOS and Android and then launched it to the public on the App Store and Play Store with no MVP, validation, or early users.
I remember spending 2 months perfecting the design, and colors, continuously adding features, and fixing bugs.

The app was unique and had a beautiful design. But, there was a problem. Being new to mobile development, it had a lot of hidden bugs, was slow, and had a lot of features that users didn't want. I woke up one day to a huge number of negative reviews on the Play Store about how buggy this app was, how users could not create an account, and how they paid for the premium plan but still couldn't access paid features.

I was about to lose this business because of all those negative reviews. So my next step was to fix all these issues as soon as possible, push the new update to users, and finally leave a reply to negative reviews telling them that the problem was fixed. Some of them updated their reviews from 1 star to 4 or 5 stars.
The overall review for the app on the Play Store was 3.5 stars and I ended up selling the business to a European startup.

The lesson here is to always show your app to early adopters before launching to the public. Your first version will always have bugs and lack features but they will understand and won't be hard on you.
That's why working with a small group of people to improve your app is crucial for a successful launch.

Build an MVP, launch to a small group of early adopters and offer them an exclusive discount, fix bugs, and add features users want, then once your early users stop reporting bugs or suggesting big features you can launch to the public.

That's the hard lesson I learned from one of my businesses and hopefully, I won't repeat the same mistake. I'm currently working on an interactive product demo app called Dymolab.com and looking for early users. If you're interested make sure to join the waitlist.