Launch

I had coffee this morning with an entrepreneur. He’s creating a technology that’s going to revolutionize the lighting industry. His products do the same thing that $20,000 consoles do, for only about $1000. It was exciting to hear him talk about his company and show me a demo of the product.

I was trying to temper my advice, because I saw so many things I could add to the project. He could add this feature. Change the packaging to this. Name this product this…

I didn’t want to overwhelm him with options because I know that’s frustrating when you’re just trying to get your product out there. It’s easy to feel like you have to take and do something with every good bit of advice you receive.

Fortunately, I saw my friend wasn’t getting discouraged. He was getting excited by my suggestions. He even had already considered some of my ideas and was planning that for the next release.

I was excited to see he wasn’t holding up his production. He had a great viable product, and he was releasing it. He’s releasing it July 10th, actually.

One of the worst things we can do when we’re creating a new product or launching a new idea is to keep tinkering with it until we’ve made it “perfect” or included all of our wonderful ideas. The problem with that, is that the project is never perfect. And you’ll always have more ideas you can add to a project. If you keep adding all your ideas, you’ll eventually launch with a jumbled, overcomplicated product.

But he had a good thing, and he’s launching. There’s time to add the other features later.

What’s your idea? Is it ready to launch? No, seriously. Is the base functionality or feature there? Is it minimally viable? Why not launch? Add the other stuff later. You might even find out it isn’t necessary. You might have gold in your hands right now, and you just need to spend it.

[Blog photo from Mopho.to]