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Please share some solid reasons/quotes to push v1 fasterrrrr?

I see all the time, being a developer always want to fix each and everything before releasing the first version. The features pile up over time and ultimately it may even put the product to trash for not completing it on time. In-fact, this could be not a developer thing alone!

It would be great if the community shares their thoughts on

"The reason for pushing any product's first version out to the world as quickly as possible".

Recently i'm touched by this statement

“If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.”- LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman. Even though I had a smile reading it, I felt this is a known and unavoidable mistake which I need to surpass!

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    There’s nothing like actual customer feedback. With Doka (https://pqina.nl/doka) v1 only supported image cropping and only worked with FilePond (it wasn’t even called Doka at that point).

    I had to do this because I had a million ideas I wanted to explore. As I build polished web components I had to release something that looked and worked great, for me the embarrassment was in the fact that I wanted it to be so much more.

    But, then after releasing v1 customer feedback starts rolling in. And what do you know, customers aren’t exactly looking for all that stuff I put on the roadmap, the time I could have wasted by building all that stuff. We’re at v6 now and there’s still functionality in there that I bet none of my customers have used.

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      As long as your V1 clients are entering in full knowing they are a development partner this approach is indeed an acceleration and highly valuable. BUT do not do this to clients who think they're getting a polished industry product.

      Find good partners willing to work collaboratively, knowing it'll be rocky at times and in return for their patience you'll give them time boxed BIG discounts (making sure you cover hosting expenses and keeping the lights on)

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    Don't drop garbage faster is my best advice. Break up the work into smaller known chunks always keeping them aligned with small wins for your clients or target clients. Have a plan for incremental delivery and improvement, but for the sake of the future of all new startup entrepreneurs stop ruining the faith and trust of our shared consumers with under delivered and over promised V1 products. If it is taking longer than expected it's normally either the plan was incomplete, your allowing scope creep, or you need more (or different) resources which is still a variant of your plan was incomplete.

    Focus and schedules require relentless and unwaivering commitment. (And a lot of overtime and passionate colleagues)

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    I can't quite answer that question, but I got one piece of advice out of an otherwise-terrible job: Always look at the detailed return on investment for scheduling decisions. If you (by which I mean "your organization") can make the case that you'll use money than you'll earn by waiting, then rush. If you can make the case that you'll make more money than you use by waiting, then wait. If you can't make either case, then you may need more information to understand your audience better. That goes for the entire team, from sales to development.
    It was, as I said, an awful place to work, but needing to defend every recommendation with "projections say we'll get/retain X new users with this feature, but it'll cost Y worker-days to complete" and being able to turn that into dollar values is always a much more compelling argument than "this worked (or didn't work) for that rich guy."

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    For me it is quite obvious. All has to do with my personality. I am, as well as many others here, introverted creative person. So the most joy I get is from creating the product itself, seeing it being born, constantly trying new stuff due to creativity. We as creative people are constantly thinking about new ideas. Discipline and determination is what we are missing and for me personally, those two are things I focus on improving the most.

    It is so easy to find a new idea to try. Just for an hour or even less. I bet everyone here has their drawer project that just sits there dead unfinished.

    Other issue can be too much focus on detail/perfectionism, but i think it is less common.

    Give a creative person discipline and determination and he becomes a god.

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      Depends on the size, but agreed on the drawer project... I've got a few hundred.

      The discipline and determination facets are what have always killed me on striking it out on my own BUT making a plan, set milestones based on small estimate-able chunks, and don't over commit!!! This is where I've found success, I'll try a spike/prototype for an idea. However, if I want to get serious I've been more successful when I dedicate the time to make a plan and a schedule that I hold myself to! Setting reminders on your calendar to remind you of your commitment to delivery also helps!

      Hopefully this helps others too 😅

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      I feel like i'm reading about me :) True that being small teams and dev from start of the career that kind of quality to fix everything at start is deeply built in. Even though i personally feel its a good quality to cherish but it has its own problems it creates which hurts constantly about delivery :(

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