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Why being embarrassed is critical to the success of your startup
Reid Hoffman (founder of LinkedIn) was speaking at a Churchill event and said something that really resonated with me:
‘If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.’
Every entrepreneur and startup faces this question when launching a new product or service - when do we go live. And it’s not always an easy answer when one balances:
- time to market
- quality
- first impressions
- member experience
- status anxiety
- and a host of other factors.
Being embarrassed is good for a startup however, because in the beginning you don’t even know if you have anything worth starting.
Fire … then aim, aim, aim
When you release the first version of your product, you are really shooting in the dark. Often you can’t even see that target, much less know where it is. All you’ve got is a hunch. And until you pull that trigger, and light up the room with that muzzle flash, you don’t know where to adjust your aim.
Don’t view this as a bad thing. It just is.
- Flickr started off as a massive multiplayer online game (Game Never Ending) before realizing people really just wanted to share and tag their photos.
- Head started off building tennis racquets before realizing they could really dominate skis.
- Viagra was originally made to help people with hypertension - not erectile dysfunction.
Rest assured, your idea is going to morph and change which is why being embarrassed about your first release isn’t a bad thing.
Be embarrassed
So does being embarrassed give us an excuse to write buggy software, skip testing, and release shoddy work? No.
But being embarrassed is a good litmus test when you have a set of features you think could be valuable, and you’re tempted to add one more feature, fix one more bug, and delay the release one more week.
Be embarrassed, and get your product out there in the market place. Time is everything.
What do you think?
The Start Up Success 2006 video with Reid’s quote at 35:55.
* The whole video is worth watching if you are into entrepreneurship and startups.
March 15th, 2007 at 12:15 pm
I TOTALLY agree with this! I just released a website for helping with downtown parking. Anyways, I threw up the site in literally 10 minutes and emailed the media. I ended up in the Calgary Sun, on jackfm, am 660, city tv news and breakfast television, all in 2 days!
There is lots of stuff I want to add to the site, don’t know what the exact biz model is yet (pay per post, premium/featured ads, advertising, etc) and I was already approached by companies with big lots and companies that want to advertise on the site.
Related to this is fear holding people back - I contacted a few friends that could be on tv getting interviewed about their interested in this parking site. They all chickened out just to be interviewed on tv!
March 16th, 2007 at 10:51 am
Great story Will. That’s pretty amazing and you should definitely following through - sounds like you really hit something with the community there.
No imagine how it would have felt if you worked on the app for 12 months, pushed it live, and no one cared.
April 10th, 2007 at 8:47 am
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April 12th, 2007 at 3:52 pm
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January 2nd, 2009 at 9:56 am
[…] Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn and an incredible entrepreneur, gives this advice: “If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.” This has been my experience as well. You need to demonstrate early results in order to understand what your product is good for. […]
January 2nd, 2009 at 12:52 pm
[…] Reed Hoffman, fundador de Linkedin, y un increíble empresario, da este consejo: “Si no te averguenzas de la primera versión de tu producto, lo has lanzado demasiado tarde”. Esta ha sido mi experiencia también. Tienes que demostrar resultados prematuros para entender para qué es bueno tu producto. […]
January 2nd, 2009 at 1:18 pm
[…] Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn and an incredible entrepreneur, gives this advice: “If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.” This has been my experience as well. You need to demonstrate early results in order to understand what your product is good for. […]
January 2nd, 2009 at 4:27 pm
[…] Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn and an incredible entrepreneur, gives this advice: “If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.” This has been my experience as well. You need to demonstrate early results in order to understand what your product is good for. […]
January 4th, 2009 at 2:46 am
[…] Reid Hoffman, fondatore di LinkedIn ha detto: If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late […]
May 4th, 2009 at 11:18 pm
[…] Reid Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn, once said, “If you’re not embarassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.” (A good blog post on the quote) I think we’d be lying if we didn’t say we had some small anxieties last night at 3am as we made the deployment and switched to production. The good news is that we felt really confident about the app itself and the recording technology. We’re confident that our customers can use the app for what it’s intended - recording and watching remote usability tests! […]
August 24th, 2009 at 5:03 am
Hey! I agree with all of you.
The term “beta” gets a bit watered down by all the guys who use it for two years when their product really is ready and all (like gmail), anyway: We got our website, a market for solutions, live in a real beta a few months ago and are going to launch a new version in september. Having it there, and using it for real ourselves and was pretty insightful. And the seeker site that we’ll have online in september and with the first external clients (not only our own problems to be solved) will look quite different than we thought. Dealing with solver questions ourselves made us aware of many things we didn’t get ealier. Now, it still will be a market for solutions, but a much better one than if we had waited longer to go live.
September 2nd, 2009 at 3:27 pm
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September 11th, 2009 at 8:44 am
[…] We’re still in alpha right now, which means stuff may break, and we know it. In our defence, if you’re not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late. If you find something, please let us know via the Feedback tab. […]
January 26th, 2010 at 4:29 pm
[…] If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Or for more frequent updates you can follow me on Twitter. Thanks for visiting!Today I launched Twitdevs. It is an extremely beta release, very much taking the philosophy of “if you’re not embarrassed by your first release you’ve waited too long”. […]
March 23rd, 2010 at 3:31 pm
[…] Ship your product early Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn () and an incredible entrepreneur, gives this advice: “If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.” This has been my experience as well. You need to demonstrate early results in order to understand what your product is good for. […]
August 25th, 2010 at 6:50 am
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October 14th, 2010 at 4:53 am
[…] We’re still in alpha right now, which means stuff may break, and we know it. In our defence, if you’re not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late. If you find something, please let us know via the Feedback tab. […]
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