A. Edvard Engesaeth

Michael Seibel, Managing Director at Y Combinator, on why shipping a crappy product in under a month beats building a perfect one for a year: Michael starts with a simple challenge: "Do you remember the day Snapchat launched? Do you remember the day Instagram launched? Do you remember the day that WhatsApp launched? Remember the day that Uber or Lyft launched? Most likely you don't." His point cuts against how most founders think about launch day: "It turns out that launching is nowhere near as significant event to your users as it is to you. So, you should move up the launch as soon as possible." The reason comes down to validation. "Until you can get your product in front of customers, you can't validate whether it solves their problem. And so, it's much better to build a crappier product, release it sooner, and get it out there in front of customers, see if they want to use it." @mwseibel acknowledges the approach isn't universal: "There's some exceptions. In some extremely regulated markets like banking, for example, or lending, it's just really hard to launch. You actually have to get one s*** done before you're even allowed to get customers." But for most founders, the bar is far lower than they think: "In most consumer and B2B startups that we encounter, it's actually possible to get some form of MVP built and launched in less than a month. And so, that's what you should be thinking about."