Don’t rush to be embarrassed by the first version of your product

The intent of good quotes is lost over time. So, they are often misunderstood and misused because they are applied out of context. Reid Hoffman’s quote — “If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.” — is a great example of loss of intent.

I’ve seen this quote used as an excuse to justify a crappy v1/first version product. I haven’t heard Reid talk about this in person — but, I’m fairly certain that that wasn’t the intent.

There are two good reasons to be embarrassed about v1 (in hindsight). The first is the most common — you didn’t know better and/or couldn’t do better with the tools available. The first website I put together looked horrendous. I didn’t understand the basics of web design and it was also built on an early version of Adobe Dreamweaver. Now, however, I have slightly better design skills and, more importantly, have access to amazing tools. Thanks to the likes of Bootstrap and services like Wordpress, it is very easy to build a good website.

The second is the result of prioritizing one killer use case/risky assumption for your product and ignoring everything else. You may still be embarrassed by the first version — but, you’ll still have served that basic user/customer need.

Source: Unknown — thank you to whoever made this.

The truth is that you’ll be embarrassed by nearly everything you ship. Over time, your skills will improve, the tools will get more sophisticated, and your understanding of the user/customer need will get better. So, you don’t have to work too hard to cut a few corners now to ship something you’ll be embarrassed by. Time will take care of that. The key, instead, is not to knowingly do something you will regret.

So, the two questions I’d suggest asking are -

• Is what we are shipping helping us learn what we want to learn while providing value to the user?
• Is this our best effort based on what we know/have access to now?

If the answers to both are yes, ship away. Even if you are eventually embarrassed about what you ship, this approach will make sure you will not have any regrets.