The dangers of getting too emotionally invested in your product

Way back in 2012 Kyle and I made a static web hosting product called Paperplane.io that used Dropbox for input (and later, GitHub.)

At the time, it was a fairly unique product and we got a small amount of press and some very kind of word of mouth that led to real users and real growth. We had a regular trickle of signups that eventually resulted in nearly 8000 total users. Enough of those users had a premium account at any given time that it generally covered its costs. It just never grew enough to justify making a bigger commitment.

And so the product languished over the years...it was always there, something to work on that we just never got back to. Later, it became a big sink of negative energy: I felt bad for not working on it, both because there was so much we could and should do and because there was so much untapped potential. Eventually, that negativity fed into itself into a vicious cycle that killed all interest in working on the product.

We finally shut it down in early 2020.

My biggest takeaway from this experience: Kill your babies. I had too much emotionally invested in the potential of the idea to shut it down until long after it was time. I had serious loss-aversion about what it could be and what it meant about who I was if it stayed alive.

In the end, it was an anchor (financially, emotionally, and legally) that needed to be cut loose. Doing so gave us the space to make Tiler More and explore other ideas. We should have pulled the plug years earlier than we did!

Have you had gotten too attached to a product or idea? How'd you handle it?