Most developers optimize for the wrong thing (and it’s hard to avoid)

I say this as a developer myself, so it’s more self-reflection than criticism.

We naturally want things to be clean, elegant, maintainable — and there’s nothing wrong with that. But early-stage products don’t need elegant solutions first. They need speed, feedback, and real users.

I’ve seen beautifully built apps fail because they took too long to reach the first users. And I’ve seen messy, “quick and dirty” products succeed because they shipped fast and learned fast.

Finding the balance is tricky. The best teams know exactly when to cut corners intentionally — not sloppy, but pragmatic.

For founders here — do you prioritize speed over quality in the first version of your product? Or do you go the other way?