How do you decide what is actually worth your time as a founder?
by•
One thing I keep noticing is that almost everything can feel important when you are building.
Posting content, talking to users, improving the product, replying to comments, checking analytics, fixing small bugs, testing new channels, networking, reading advice, watching competitors.
All of it can be useful.
But not all of it moves the business forward at the same stage.
I’m curious how other founders think about this.
How do you decide what deserves your attention right now, and what is just making you feel busy?
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Vokal
At an early stage, marketing and talking to customers are the second most important priorities for me. Developing new features is third. The most important thing is production traffic monitoring and bug fixes, never fail your existing customers!
@zhen_han I long for the day I can say "never fail your existing customers." Soon enough :)
@zhen_han That order makes sense for an early-stage product. Once users start relying on it, reliability stops being a support issue and becomes part of the product itself. Marketing only helps if the core experience can hold up.
@achille82 That’s a really good way to put it.
Building often feels like the most important use of time because you can see the progress every day.
But once the product exists, the higher-leverage work is usually getting people to understand it, trust it, and remember it.
That’s exactly the kind of thing I meant by separating real progress from just feeling busy.
@farrukh_butt1
"Exactly. Right now I have Nexia — something I built and truly believe in — and I'm hoping the June 17th launch goes well, but that depends entirely on how well I communicate it, not on how well I built it.
I have so many other apps I want to build. But I've understood something: if I don't master the communication and marketing side of things first, building more will just be a waste of time.
The product is only as good as the distribution behind it."**
@achille82 That is the hard lesson a lot of founders learn late. A strong product still needs a clear story, a focused audience, and repeated distribution work to actually land.
@achille82 "learning how to communicate, how to make people care, how to make your product exist in their minds." - This hit me like a ton of bricks. So much truth here. Thats the struggle of entrepreneurship, the cross-functional thinking across multiple domains and for a first time founder, not having any knowledge or experience in those other domains. This is also what makes it exciting. You learn more about yourself, and you start to look at almost everything differently, from a business perspective, wondering how many "no's" that company received before they got their first breakthrough. Its a journey and I'm glad I started it. Can't wait to see where it heads because even if it fails, I've grown so much and no one can take that away. Continue investing in yourself everyday!
For me, it's all about freedom. If a task is just making me feel stuck at a desk instead of pushing the project forward, I try to find a way to automate it or skip it entirely. Building a product shouldn't mean being chained to an analytical dashboard all day.
@grimloaf I like the mindset, especially around automating repetitive work. At the same time, some desk work is part of building if it helps you make better decisions. The real question is whether the task creates leverage or just drains attention.
It was a struggle to be honest.
But I learned that I needed to trust my team to make the right decisions. They were trained, prepared and needed the autonomy to work on their own and I had to step down to not be an active part of everything. Delegating meant trusting, trusting meant accepting the fact that things can go side ways and I could step in for crisis control.
@fatima_shehzad Delegation is one of the hardest parts of being a founder. Giving people autonomy can unlock a lot, but it also means your role changes from doing everything to setting direction and stepping in when needed. That shift is easier said than done.