Do Less, Ship More
Most teams ship too late. Not for lack of desire or talent, but because they want to ship something exceptional.
“Just one more feature” and a 2-week release becomes a 6-month behemoth.
The result: An exhausted team with poor morale, and a bloated product that solves no real need.
The antidote (simple but hard):
Descope aggressively and launch now. YC has been preaching this for years, and they are right. Not because it’s sexy, but because shipping turns opinions into data.
An innocent lie
Usability testing and user interviews with Figma are useful (if conducted correctly). But they only tell you what users think they want, not what they actually need and would pay for.
Unfortunately users lie; they want to be nice, and they want to please us. See “The Mom Test” by Rob Fitzpatrick. It’s up to us to decipher what they really want.
And there is only one way to really find out: Ship and watch people use (or not use) your product.
- Do people use the product?
- Do they come back?
- Are they paying?
If yes, you are building something people want.
Acquiring users is hard and expensive. Giving your product away for free is a dangerous trap and a great way to waste time. Businesses need to make money to survive.
Show, don’t tell
With the rise of AI, you can put products in front of users in days and test your theories in almost real time. Never in the history of software development has it been so easy to ship a product and get feedback.
I was once speaking with a user when I was working with CAIS, and they said something that stuck with me:
Even one minute saved per order amounts to 10,000 minutes saved per month, for a firm that places 10,000 orders/month.
That’s 167 hours ≈ 20.8 workdays saved, every month for just ONE firm!
We had 1000s of firms, and when we shipped, we were saving several minutes per order, not one.
You can see why they were so excited about our product and happy to pay for it.
Fight the urge
Our intuition is to build more and more, whereas most of the time doing less and doing it well is what leads to better outcomes.
Users will forgive missing polish if the workflow clearly makes today’s job faster and safer. And they will happily pay for it.
Always ask yourself these simple questions:
- Is this what users actually want?
- What’s the fastest way to test that?
Then ship it and see what happens.
A startup’s unfair advantage
While larger companies have almost unlimited resources, they also have a reputation and a brand they want to protect. They move slowly and carefully, afraid to make mistakes and fail.
This is why startups can and often do win. By moving fast, taking risks, and learning from failures. They pivot based on real user feedback, instead of getting stuck in endless discussions about what users might want.
Long releases drain energy. Shipping is motivating. The team sees their work in the wild, hears real feedback, and builds momentum.
Stretch the deadline twice, add “just one more feature” and watch quality drop as people grind it out.
Do less, Ship More.
Your users will thank you for it!