How do you decide what is actually worth your time as a founder?
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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!
@achille82 @wereframe Ah, the entrepreneurial life - nothing else like it. Been at this for 33 years and I wouldn't change a thing. Now I'm here, dipping into the world of AI and I'm learning something new every time I'm on PH. Glad you're enjoying the adventure and learning as you go, too!
@achille82 Yes and I'd take it one step further back. Builders usually build because they have data (or hopefully do) that there's a need from their ICP. But the other foundational pieces never got created: What's the offer? How will it be priced? How am I positioned? What's the messaging that ties it all together?
Actually, your line "make your product exist in their minds" is the perfect example of positioning. It just gets met for the first time after launch, so it feels like a distribution problem.
I get it, building is the fun cool part. But if the foundation isn't set, that fun cool product won't get the sales you want.
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.
@farrukh_butt1 Definitely easier said than done but it does work. Your team learns to handle things on its own. Over time you know things worked and no longer need your attention.
After launching I think keeping quality standards high by de-bugging, updating and responding to feedback would be my first priority. Then features and improvements would come as a natural next step. But I am very much in the beginning and absolutely dreading the marketing part 😅
@adela_c That makes sense. Keeping the product stable and responding to feedback should probably come before adding more. And I get the marketing part. It feels like a separate job when you’re just trying to build well.
I agree, I call it the "mind space" problem. In my experience, unless you are occupying people's long-term memory "space" for their need/problem, your product is dead in the water. No matter how great it is. That's why even ads don't do that well - they rarely build mind space. The user needs to see you multiple times, trust you to put you in their mind space.
@shawnmichael I like that framing. “Mind space” is probably the part founders underestimate most because it doesn’t always show up immediately in metrics. A user may not convert the first time they see you, but repeated trust-building makes you the product they remember when the problem becomes urgent.
@farrukh_butt1 yeah I think you got it right. It's a tough problem to solve - which I think is why most product builders put it off or never tackle it at all. It's unpredictable and often expensive to get into people's mind space.
Honestly, I think "everything feels important" is a symptom, not a prioritization problem.
It usually means something foundational hasn't been decided yet. When you know exactly who you're selling to and why they'd pick you, half that list stops mattering this week.
Content for an audience you haven't defined? Skip.
More volume when the message isn't converting anywhere? Skip.
A new channel when nobody knows why you over the alternative? Skip.
And I get it, the busy work feels productive. Fixing bugs, checking dashboards, that's the comfortable stuff. The uncomfortable stuff is making the commercial decisions that would actually sort the list.
So my test is pretty blunt: am I doing this task because it moves a decision forward, or because it lets me avoid making one?