When do you cross the bridge?

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Have started my own venture 7 months ago. A start up, specially if it is your own, teaches you more than any teacher in the world can and will, sometimes the most obvious of the things.

There are lessons at every step, some you can look at and learn, some you choose to overlook and some you just don’t see. One such lesson I learnt recently and would like to share with you here-

The Error

When you are an entrepreneur, you are the most restless and most eager of the pack (a very common mistake), almost like a child with a toy, the only difference is the attention span of the child is a little longer. You want to go ahead and do everything and even worse, all at once.

We are making a product, so I was focused on getting all the features and all the plans integrated in the first release itself. Pushing the team and myself to dish out a flawless product in the first go. This was making us loose the following:-

– Early user reaction users and a chance to incorporate their feedback

– Another chance to get in touch with our users about a new release

– Most of all, killing the joy to let the ship in the water and see it sail.

The Learning

My Co-founder then gave me my recently acquired wisdom, He told me, to not worry about all the features, because we will never have enough. It is an ongoing process. Look at any product in the world, it keeps upgrading itself, it keeps dishing out newer versions and features. We will never have control on this aspect of business. What we do though have a control over are the efforts to make sure that every release works perfectly.

Simple words these were, but made me learn something very important. Cross the bridge only when it comes.

I do not mean to say that you should settle for mediocrity. Do nothing if you can, but don’t be ordinary. What I do want to share through this experience is that, creating something is an on-going process, it never ends and it should not. So do not worry about perfecting it, just focus on releasing versions that work just fine.

Remember “never worry about crossing the bridge that hasn’t come yet.”

Thank you for reading, you can write back @prateekb11