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After a few years in startups, I’ve found the only death knell to shipping software – when product runs out of ideas. You can work around everything else. Prio

by Swizec 5y ago

After a few years in startups, I’ve found the only death knell to shipping software – when product runs out of ideas. You can work around everything else. Prioritize speed or stability, use different standards for different areas, even any number of project management methodologies. A group of talented folks with a goal can make anything work. But when you’re out of ideas, that’s when shipping dies. Your engineering department devolves into a pile of factorings and refactorings and turd polishing projects and academic exercises and none of it drives the business forward. It’s just busywork because engineers are expensive. And trust me, they’re gonna get tired of the busywork and they will leave. You’ll get tired of paying them for busywork too.

Zababa 5y ago
> when product runs out of ideas Could this mean that the product is "finished" and you can put it in support mode and slowly reduce the number of people working on it?
- Swizec 5y ago
  That may be, but it doesn’t jive with the VC monkey strapped to your back. It usually means there isn’t enough user interest/engagement. Users always have problems they run into or novel usecases they’d like to use you for.
- robotresearcher 5y ago
  Why slowly?
  - jerrre 5y ago
    Might be because it's hard to reverse such a process if needed?
catwind7 5y ago
what if you have plenty of ideas but you run out of money because you can't ship fast enough? :D sorry couldn't help it on more serious note - I'm curious what you mean by run out of ideas. do you mean product literally not having any ideas? that seems hard to believe. Or do you mean ideas just don't gain traction? I've seen that happen a lot more.
nly 5y ago
I've worked for a small business that had no end of ideas, and had the money and the talent to execute. These days it's still profitable despite the fact that the product look largely unchanged from 5 years ago. Competition moving in on the product is seen as "making the overall pie bigger". A failure to grow doesn't necessarily mean business failure. Sometimes business owners just want a lifestyle business.
allenleein 5y ago
This is so true. I worked at a startup backed by famous VCs. We over-raised seed $, hired some top engineers to work on a VCish product with different cool dev methodologies. Two years later, the ship went down. If I were the founder, I would focus on one thing: ship something people want badly as fast as possible.

by Swizec 5y ago

Zababa 5y ago

> when product runs out of ideas Could this mean that the product is "finished" and you can put it in support mode and slowly reduce the number of people working on it?

Swizec 5y ago
That may be, but it doesn’t jive with the VC monkey strapped to your back. It usually means there isn’t enough user interest/engagement. Users always have problems they run into or novel usecases they’d like to use you for.
robotresearcher 5y ago
Why slowly?
- jerrre 5y ago
  Might be because it's hard to reverse such a process if needed?

catwind7 5y ago

what if you have plenty of ideas but you run out of money because you can't ship fast enough? :D sorry couldn't help it on more serious note - I'm curious what you mean by run out of ideas. do you mean product literally not having any ideas? that seems hard to believe. Or do you mean ideas just don't gain traction? I've seen that happen a lot more.

nly 5y ago

I've worked for a small business that had no end of ideas, and had the money and the talent to execute. These days it's still profitable despite the fact that the product look largely unchanged from 5 years ago. Competition moving in on the product is seen as "making the overall pie bigger". A failure to grow doesn't necessarily mean business failure. Sometimes business owners just want a lifestyle business.

allenleein 5y ago

This is so true. I worked at a startup backed by famous VCs. We over-raised seed $, hired some top engineers to work on a VCish product with different cool dev methodologies. Two years later, the ship went down. If I were the founder, I would focus on one thing: ship something people want badly as fast as possible.