Rework jason fried

Launch now 
 
When is your product or service finished? When should you put it out on the 
market? When is it safe to let people have it? Probably a lot sooner than you're 
comfortable with. Once your product does what it needs to do, get it out there. 
 
Just because you've still got a list of things to do doesn't mean it's not done. Don't 
hold everything else up because of a few leftovers. You can do them later. And doing 
them later may mean doing them better, too. 
 
Think about it this way: If you had to launch your business in two weeks, what 
would you cut out? Funny how a question like that forces you to focus. You suddenly 
realize there's a lot of stuff you don't need. And what you do need seems obvious. When 
you impose a deadline, you gain clarity. It's the best way to get to that gut instinct that 
tells you, "We don't need this."  

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Put off anything you don't need for launch. Build the necessities now, worry about 
the luxuries later. If you really think about it, there's a whole lot you don't need on day 
one. 
 
When we launched Basecamp, we didn't even have the ability to bill customers! 
Because the product billed in monthly cycles, we knew we had a thirty-day gap to figure 
it out. So we used the time before launch to solve more urgent problems that actually 
mattered on day one. Day 30 could wait. 
 
Camper, a brand of shoes, opened a store in San Francisco before construction 
was even finished and called it a Walk in Progress. Customers could draw on the walls of 
the empty store. Camper displayed shoes on cheap plywood laid over dozens of shoe 
boxes. The most popular message written by customers on the walls: "Keep the store just 
the way it is."* 
 
Likewise, the founders of Crate and Barrel didn't wait to build fancy displays 
when they opened their first store. They turned over the crates and barrels that the 
merchandise came in and stacked products on top of them.+ 
 
Don't mistake this approach for skimping on quality, either. You still want to 
make something great. This approach just recognizes that the best way to get there is 
through iterations. Stop imagining what's going to work. Find out for real.*Walt 
Stanchfield, Drawn to Life: 20 Golden Years of Disney Master Classes, vol. 1, The Walt 
Stanchfield Lectures, Oxford, UK: Focal Press, 2009. *Pasolivo Olive Oil, Zingerman's, 
www.zingermans.com/product.aspx?productid=o-psl*"About Kingsford: Simply a Matter 
of Taste," Kingsford, www.kingsford.com/about/index.htm*Fara Warner, "Walk in 
Progress," Fast Company, Dec. 19, 2007, 
www.fastcompany.com/magazine/58/lookfeel.html+Matt Valley, "The Crate and Barrel 
Story," Retail Traffic, June 1, 2001, retailtrafficmag.com/mag/retail_crate_barrel_story