#00.02: There's No Such Thing as a Perfect Idea

No one cares if you're a unicorn.

Can we talk about something real quick? Because I see founders do this a lot when they build their first product. Especially first-time founders.

There's no such thing as a perfect idea. There. Is. No. Such. Thing. And I know sometimes it sounds like an abstract note from another LinkedIn post, but stay with me here, because the reason is actually more simple, and kind of interesting, when you think about it.

What you're picturing as the best version is more complex than you want to admit. No, it's not always about the interface. Sometimes it's having a lot of features.

My first experience with this was with my first startup. So for context, I co-founded a software company with 3 friends. That was in 2018. We built mainly websites and apps for small businesses and games in-house. The game was the reason why we started. We wanted to be an indie game company.

Anyway, when we built our first game we spent a lot of time just building and making it perfect but had zero strategy on how to get it out there in front of users. We knew we'd publish to the stores but that's where it all ends. We assumed once we publish it would become viral.

That's where the problem is.

You see, the more time you spend building, refining in your black box, the less time you have to work on other important factors like sales and distribution.

You're not getting closer; on the contrary, you're getting far behind. You're polishing your best guess about what people want without really checking if you're in the right direction. And most startups have died on this hill.

Now let me be clear. There's a difference between shipping fast and shipping wrong. The most basic requirement is to ship a product that works, something that will give users a feel of what you're building. But that will only give you a foot in; it will not make you stand out, because you look and feel like a million products out there that also do the bare minimum and are even better. To do that, you'll need a brand, and content.

We often say things like "users don't know what they want until you give it to them" and that is true. Users and clients don't know the solution, and that's why they come to you. But they know the problem, which you don't, until you ask them. What you're basically doing is trying to imagine all the case scenarios, whether they actually exist or not.

If you ship a perfect product, you're already late to the market. The purpose of an MVP is to figure out in a very short time what you assumed you knew about the market that's wrong, where your ideal customers are, and most importantly, how to convince them that your product is their best solution.

So the question I guess you're asking is, when do you know when to ship?

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Great news! I've started a new podcast! In case you missed it, the 0→1 Startup is now on LinkedIn and Spotify, so if you'd like to listen to this instead, you can find it there.

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Okay, so where were we… ah yes… how do you know when to ship?

Here are the 3 guidelines I use now, after learning the hard way:

1. Ship as fast as possible

Ship the second a real person can use your product to complete the core feature, the one thing it's supposed to do. That's it. If the product aligns with your brand direction, and a stranger can use it without getting confused, your MVP is done.

Because here's what I didn't know back then. I thought "ready" meant it had to have a lot of great features. In reality, it just had to be out there.

2. Focus on distribution

After you're done with building, don't go back and add more features just because you can. Now the real work begins: distribution and marketing.

Back to my first startup. People who played it, liked it. The problem is almost nobody played it, because we didn't think about how people would find it. We treated distribution as an afterthought instead of a crucial task.

When you're a technical founder you get really good at the thing you're good at… building… so you keep doing more of that, because it feels like progress. But if no one knows it exists, you're just building a passion project.

This is where content also steps in — and I want to slow down here for a second, because these 3 things — content, brand and solution — are the first things you need to focus on when building 0→1 — and I think you need to think of them separately as different products in one ecosystem.

The solution is the most obvious. It's your SaaS, your landing page, your mobile app. Goes without saying, but it has to work, and work well for the users. You've probably nailed this part, so I'm not going to dwell on it.

Then comes the brand. The brand is your whole identity, how the product looks (logo, colors, visual identity), how it feels when users interact with it. This is why a stranger somewhere remembers you exist a week or two after they've tried the product. People don't remember what you say. They remember how you make them feel. In a saturated market — and let's be honest, every market is saturated, so being functionally fine is table stakes — users discard generic looking products, even if they're 10x functionally better than other alternatives.

And content. Yes. Content. This is perhaps the most underrated. Content and distribution is how people find out your brand or product exists in the first place. And this is the part I didn't even know about back in my first startup. I thought all we had to do was build the app/website/game. But as I learned later, distribution and marketing is a full-time job of its own.

I also want to tell you that you don't need all of it to be perfect before you launch. You don't need a perfect app, a perfect logo, and a full year's worth of content to get started. That's the perfect idea mentality I wish a lot of founders got rid of. You just need to start.

Start lean, start small. You can even start one at a time. But I'd always recommend content first, not because I've figured it out, but because the other times I started with product or brand first, I failed. I built quietly for months and somehow expected people to show up when it was ready. Content, on the other hand, gives people a reason to follow your journey before you have a product. It all comes down to how good you are at selling a great story.

3. Sell like crazy

Every time you have a chance to sell your product, take it. If you're a solo founder you're wearing a lot of hats but the money is in sales. In fact, if you had to choose between…

1. an incomplete product with a lot of sales, or
2. a complete SaaS with no users,

…choose the former, because nothing beats early validation.

So if you're sitting on an idea right now, building quietly in your garage or your bedroom, ask yourself this:

"Is this delay actually making the product better, or is it just pretending to be, and delaying the moment where you find out whether you're building something people want?"

Because that moment WILL come, believe it or not — even if you wait till next year. At some point you'll have to face the truth that you're either on the right track, or you were just working on a passion project the whole time. It's better to rip off that band-aid earlier than later.

So ship the thing now and make it "perfect" later. That's what it means to build a 0→1 startup.

But that raises a bigger question, one I skipped right past to get here: Why 0→1 at all? And why should you care?

That's exactly what we're getting into in the next episode, so stick around, and I'll see you next week. I'm Stephen, and this was episode 2 of the 0→1 Startup podcast.