Just Ship It

Occasionally, the muse whispers in our ear. A brainwave hits us like a train. We have an idea!

But... we’re not sure if it’s a good idea. So we wonder, should we spend time on this or stick to our already packed schedule?. 

My advice: Just Ship It. 

Just Do It, as the famous slogan says. Implement the most quintessential version of it. What programmers and indie hackers call an MVP. No, not the Most Valuable Player. Minimum Viable Product. The essence of the idea, without the bells and whistles. 

If you build it, you can show it to someone. They could, theoretically, say this is amazing, can I pay you for it?! Or, what’s more likely, this sucks, but, you could do this this and this, and then maybe, it will suck a little bit less.

Worst case scenario? It flops, but at least you got it out of your system.

The alternative to "Just Ship It" mentality.

Keep pondering and thinking about it. Ask others if they think it’s a good idea. Collect feedback, most of which will be irrelevant. You will waste energy and get nowhere.

If you didn’t build it, you may always wonder whether it was something that could have helped some people. The truly much worse case scenario, in a year's time, you open a news page and see that some company doing exactly the thing you were going to do sold for a fortune. What a shame. 

If you don’t want to build it for yourself, build it for others. It’s selfish not to share your creativity with the world.

At the same time, there’s nothing more noble than shipping your work and embracing criticism.

Just Ship It.