Launch before you're ready

What learning are you missing out on by waiting until your product or feature is more perfect?

When my wife and I bought our house several years ago, we looked for one with an extra bedroom that we could rent out on AirBNB for a little extra income. When we found a house that had an extra 2-bedroom guesthouse in the back yard, we were elated. This was more perfect than we could imagine!

So we bought the house, and did some repainting and other improvements to prepare the backyard guesthouse to rent.

Then I took a few photos with my mobile phone, and uploaded them to AirBNB.

“Don’t publish that!” my wife said. “Those pictures are bad! Use your DSLR and take good pictures before you publish it.”

“I’ll take good pictures when I have a chance, but I really want to get this listing live, to start learning from it. Is it okay if I publish now, and upload better pictures on the weekend?”

She reluctantly agreed.

So around 10pm that night, our AirBNB listing went live.

The next morning we had 8 reservations!

My wife then agreed that it was wise to upload the listing with the “bad” pictures earlier than waiting for the good ones.

We did eventually upload better pictures. And we immediately raised the nightly price, too.

What learning are you missing out on by waiting until your product or feature is more perfect? Can you release a version of it now, and start getting feedback sooner?

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