Hey ,
What do you do when you have everything you need to launch but choose to wait six more months?
Most founders would call that insane.
In a world obsessed with “ship fast and iterate,” intentionally slowing down at the exact moment you could go to market feels like startup suicide.
We had everything we needed to launch InstantDocs six months ago.
Our team could have thrown up a site, pushed traffic, and called it “good enough.”
Instead, we did the opposite.
The launch we deliberately delayed.
Six months ago, InstantDocs worked.
Customers loved it.
Case studies, testimonials, and a product that solved real problems were all in place. A launch was possible and I think the vast majority of founders would have launched.
Pressure to get to market, start generating buzz, and begin the growth engine is enormous. But we paused.
You don’t want to go loud until your product has earned the right to be loud. I learned this by getting my ass handed to me several times.
Here’s what I knew actually needed to happen.
Actions we took instead of launching.
I saw competitors were rushing to market, and we essentially zigged while they zagged.
New features got paused, an external QA team got hired, and approximately 100 bugs got fixed in a single sweep.
Edge cases that 95% of users would never hit got cleaned up.
Onboarding got refined until it was intuitive for someone who’d never seen the product before.
Flows that worked but weren’t elegant got rebuilt.
Reworked items included:
- Handovers
- Progress states
- API syncs
- OAuth integrations
All of that takes time, is invisible to users, and is the difference between “looks good on a landing page” vs “stands next to the best tools in the category.”
Why “good enough” is actually expensive.
Launching too early means you’re shipping your reputation along with your product.
Bugs and clunky flows will give customers reasons not to refer you.
A mentality of “we’ll fix that later” will create technical debt that slows you down for years if you have success.
People like Garry Tan at YC are full of shit with their ship fast and break things advice.
His portfolio can withstand a 95% failure rate. That’s their entire model. If you’re company is founded and grown with your money you can’t afford that unless you have a trust fund.
Fixing problems after launch takes 10x more time and costs 10x more money than preventing them before launch.
Speed versus strength.
I know this because I used to believe this idea of speed for the sake of speed. My mantra was to ship fast, break things, and iterate quickly.
I don’t want to downplay speed entirely. It does matter. And there is a fine line between operating from a position of strength and procrastinating because you’re focusing on BS. Expounding upon that is worthy of a whole different newsletter more than likely.
At this stage in my journey, strength is the priority because market domination is what we’re after.
InstantDocs and Helply need to be undeniably better than anything else in the category.
- User flows must work perfectly.
- Integrations must be bulletproof.
- Handling edge cases gracefully is non-negotiable.
- Overwhelming strength at launch is the goal.
SaaS companies typically spend years catching up to where they should have launched. Those companies ship MVPs and then spend the next 24 months making them actually good.
Upfront work is happening instead. When we go to market, customers will be asked to choose the clearly superior option.
Discomfort is part of this strategy. The FOMO exists.
- Days without launching are days competitors could gain ground.
- Yes, weeks of polishing are weeks without revenue or real market feedback.
- The urge to just ship something and start iterating is enormous.
- Other AI CX companies launch with far less mature products and get attention.
Such pressure is also why most products feel unfinished.
Almost isn’t the bar.
Both products will launch when they meet every standard we set for ourselves.
Too many companies never escape “almost.” Stuck in “almost,” they never quite ship something good enough to win. Waiting for undeniably ready is the only path forward.
People who use InstantDocs or Helply will immediately understand why we spent the extra time.
Crowded markets ignore “pretty good”, only “obviously better” breaks through.
Until next time,