A 20-minute walk is better than imagining a 3-mile run
One of the most insightful bloggers in the entrepreneurship space is Mark Suster. On his blog, Both Sides of the Table he has a massive amount of content on launching and running a startup. Several years back he wrote a post titled Stop Trying to Catch Lightning in a Bottle that has really stuck with me through the years.
His advice touches on how startups should best launch new products. Most people have heard the quote that you shouldn’t let perfect be the enemy of good. However, some people confuse this with being the opposite of the concept of going from ‘good to great’. They are not opposites.
The key is to remember that launching a good product on day 1 is not going to stop the product from being great on day 365. However, if you wait until day 365 to launch, it’s likely that your product is still not great and it taking you until day 730 or longer to get to great.
Why is this? In short, it takes real customers using your product in the real world to go from good to great. No amount of simulation or testing can replicate this. So the longer you wait to launch, it becomes more and more likely that you get stuck in analysis paralysis and never get to great.
Suster equates this concept with a quote from habits and happiness guru Gretchen Rubin that you surely can relate with:
“The 20-minute walk I take is better than the 3-mile run I never start.
For more, be sure to read Suster’s full blog post on this topic here.