startups

You Need to Ship Faster

Shipping product is the heartbeat of any startup. Stop shipping and you're dead.

November 17, 20191 min read

You need to be going faster. The rate at which you're iterating on your product is too slow. You have a limited amount of runway left and if you don't move fast enough, you'll become broke. To avoid going broke, and to build a product that people love, you need to ship faster.

Your typical two week (and oftentimes far longer) sprint cycle is far too slow. You need to be shipping to production every 2 days. You cannot have a task that takes longer than 2 days to complete. Whatever you ship must provide immediate value to your users. It must be a new quantum of utility. Whether it's a new feature, a bug fix, or even clearer copywriting, you must ship it, and ship it in less than two days.

Two day sprint cycles are intense, but they're necessary. You should have 2-3 completed sprints per week. You must allocate the time for these sprints, otherwise they won't happen. Each sprint should result in a new deployment to production and the change should be immediately available to your users.

Shipping a new quantum of utility to your users every 2 days is hard, but it can be done if you avoid distractions. You must focus with a two day sprint. Avoid checking Twitter, Reddit, Instagram, etc. They're all just too good. You must keep a clear schedule and avoid any unnecessary commitments. Every day must contain a big chunk of free time.

After every ship, you should email, text, DM, and call your users to ask them what they think about the latest feature. Was it valuable? Are they using it? Do they want more of it? Do they think it's useless? Shipping is simply a means to an end, and that end is learning what your users need. The faster you ship, the faster you learn, and the faster you can converge on a product people want.

The only thing that matters is building a fucking excellent product. So ship faster.