Samantha den

hen we built our first app, we followed the classic startup advice to ship fast and fix things later. We launched a very raw version, but initial users were turned off by minor bugs and UI glitches, and most of them never gave us a second chance.

For our second tool, we spent two extra months polishing the core UX and fixing edge cases before letting anyone in. The launch was smaller, but first-time user activation and positive reviews were night and day compared to the first attempt.

Is the ship an embarrassing MVP advice outdated now that users expect high-quality software from day one?

When I first launched I swore I d keep things super minimal and never do heavy discounts or bloated features. A couple years in I catch myself making compromise after compromise just to keep numbers up. Partly because I was naive back then but partly because taking shortcuts was just easier. How do you tell if you re actually maturing as a founder or just losing your original vision?

I still design in Adobe first. It's in my fingers, like being used to writing notes with a pen and then having to do everything on a computer.

After that I bring it to life with AI, which opens up a lot I couldn't do on my own before. But I don't want to skip the first part. That's where I actually think.