It’s a play on the phrase “Done is better than perfect.”

This iteration “launched is better than perfect” works better for me, and I believe, for makers in general. Because very often we want to make sure everything is perfect before it goes live. But it doesn’t have to. 

@shl mentioned on Twitter that:

Instagram still doesn’t have an iPad app.  Twitter still doesn’t let you edit tweets or search DMs.  You can launch with less than you think. You may not even need it, ten years later!

I’d always believed in launching scrappy products fast than over-polishing things, so his words initially sounded like preaching to the converted, for me. But something about the way @shl put it felt refreshing! Whatever we felt was mission-critical or even marginally important to the product, might not be at all – at launch, or even ten year later. Because for me, that phrase “launched is better” always felt like it was just about prioritising your features roadmap; that you will eventually get to finishing all the features you thought were important, sometime in the future. 

But @shl was saying that, maybe it’s not needed. At all. Even after a decade. You’ll never know whether those features are critical until you launch. 

Isn’t it scary to think, by trying to (over-)perfect things, you might be building something that the product doesn’t even need built for a decade?

A decade is a long, long time in tech. I can’t imagine spending time on something that’s not needed within a decade, or longer. Putting a timeframe to a feature in such a way makes it all the more salient. That’s got to be the ultimate productivity suck, and the worst feeling ever about the impact or consequence of your work.

There’s many makers here on 200wad, so just leaving it here for anyone who might need to read this: 

Launched is better than perfect.