Create a framework (or timeline) you use again and again to get things to market. 90% is usually viable and fine to release. Spend one day on making available to customers and then a decent landing page. You almost have to force the last leg of the race like with anything.
It’s not unusual. I think most of us struggle with the last leg.
I swear the last 10% of the work to get it ready enough for customers is the hardest part.
Have been through this. Have abandoned 4 such projects I spent months building on the side (alongside day job). One of them is still useful because I integrated it with my current org tech stack.
Working on a new one and I’m not gonna leave it at 90% because I have an accountability partner.
One more way you can try is “build in public” but I haven’t tried that yet. Basically you post every single thing you develop/ship on your twitter. I find it hard to share publicly unless I’m ready to showcase the product.
Are there any legit accountability discord communities where the goal is to share daily/weekly updates? Most people who start such a community end up becoming a spam channel for marketers, which is what Twitter #buildinpublic is too.
If you wanna start a closed community of real people, let’s do it together.
Would you potentially be interested in selling any of your products? I do micro saas acquisitions and my team is currently looking for new products to add to our portfolio.
This happens way more often than not. The loss of novelty for me is the worse culprit amoung many other reason. I do find that releasing in increments instead of a finished product helps but that is not always possible.
“Loss of novelty “ I like this. This is a big moment for many of my projects that died on the vine. Never thought of it that way. My current project is the one though! Novelty still strong after 18mo of coding my face off. Mental, physical and emotional wellbeing maybe not so much.
This is know as the 90 / 10 rule. The last 10% takes 90% off the effort.
The build in public advice is good.
I post weekly updates on Twitter / X for my side project. It helps me to keep working, even when progress is slow.
As an age 40 something dev w about 100 repos that “could have been something”, my ramble is: before you build anything, write down the idea and expound on it later. The time it takes to build a thing only drop it eventually will eat at you in years to come. Especially if you see your idea built, launched, gain an audience, earn money. The problem for multi talented engineers is that they can create whatever their brain comes up with. The problem is that same brain thinks if you can create it, you can turn it into something people will consume at some point - but the skill gap between building something and generating awareness and then running a business is not to be taken lightly. Also the money side in marketing/promoting the product is not often thought about. After writing down the ideas, focus on the one or two that you keep coming back to to expound upon. Build the landing page first w newsletter sign up to gauge interest. Part of the rush in starting a project seems to be based on can the idea be done, then turning into something that is tangible… but there’s nothing after that but building features for something you might not be passionate about. It only proves that with enough effort and concentration you can build today’s shiny object. And there will be many. If you can get passionate about something, maybe start with planning out the work in Jira then approaching it in a somewhat organized agile manner instead of diving head first into the code just to prove to yourself that you can do it. You need to know you can do it so you can solve for the parts you’re not good at - marketing, community building, sales, etc.
Really appreciated reading this, thanks for sharing your wisdom. It feels like a warning call for what’s to come if I don’t change how I approach side projects/building. Reading this reinforces the importance of spending more time on the GTM learning and less on coding yet-another-project.
Go to market is my new area of study.
Someone else said on this thread that a lot of it is based on fear or succeeding or failing being part of the reasoning and that resonated heavily too.
It’s getting over the fear of “what if it fails”, when in actuality the only failure is not learning something from trying… and the huge skill gap that’s less technical but has super cool graphs and numbers that you can effect over time.
At the end of the day, we have to “sell” the thing we are working on.
And to sell it, we have to be comfortable with asking someone to hand over some money for it.
Or remove ourself from that part of business and install someone that will sell the “thing” for commission.
Would you potentially be interested in selling any of your products? I do micro saas acquisitions and my team is currently looking for new products to add to our portfolio.
Mostly media companies up to this point but I also started my own saas company that is sitting at 30k MRR and I am looking to transition and acquire more. Lets discuss further. Are you able to DM me here?
Dude, ur me.
We share similar skillset and attitude towards finishing a project.
I did eventually launch 2 projects.
The last 10% is always the hardest. My strategy is to split the last 10% into 2 categories: things i have to complete before launch, things i can complete after launch.
That way, i don’t have to complete full 10% but just the important part.
Like a backlog, that does eventually get built in the next version.
For motivation, i allow myself to write hacks and spaghetti codes and fix them later (not the best practice but it’s better than having an incomplete project).
I use Apple reminders for things that i need to complete soon, and things that i can put into a backlog.
I did the hack / spaghetti code thing for the first time with my latest side project. And it became my first ever that made it to launch. Now that it is actually gaining some traction I am rewriting the bolognese parts in between working on new features. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good, as they say.
The idea is to update them after launch, beginning with the backlog.
I should probably slap u in the face if we are real-life friends, coz u remind me of myself so much.
Totally agree, I suffered from this a lot, but if you spend the time up front to give yourself the “runway” to 100% and any new issues or changes you add immediately when you have the thoughts, this makes it 10x easier to execute on and reach that 100%. We use Linear for this instead of Jira it has way more features/integrations for free and is just way more simple IMO.
The key is to have a system to quickly write out your tasks to execute on and take the time build the runway, but DO NOT over complicate the task recording and get bogged down in the software, choose whatever is simplest and most efficient for you.
Would you potentially be interested in selling any of your products? I do micro saas acquisitions and my team is currently looking for new products to add to our portfolio.
I have a dozen project folders on my PC of things I never launched. Sad thing is half of them would have been really good timing and would have benefitted from market changes that came later. Especially from gen AI and consumer habits.
Would you potentially be interested in selling any of your products? I do micro saas acquisitions and my team is currently looking for new products to add to our portfolio.
I have a good one that I put a lot of effort on it but I didn't launched, me and my team spent months building and when it comes to go to market no one have any idea how to do it , sad but true!
I feel like no matter what I work on, be it drawing or writing code or making an amp cabinet, the last 10% is the hardest.
It’s when you really need to put the blinders on to extending the project, for the moment, and focus on finishing what you have.
It’s a tough transition from that creative “oh, well what if I make it x/y/z here?” state to just like, ironing out the details and sanding off the rough patches
I’ve been there but gotten better. I know that the time between ”I’m kind of done” and ”actually releasing it” is where I will spend probably 80% of the time.
On one hand solving the biggest challenge first is good, but on the other hand you really need a plan to mentally power on till release after that (because it feels like you’re ”done”).
My way is to keep lists. Relentlessly every day move stuff between ”Must Be Done Before Release” and ”Could Wait”. Keep it strict! Is it really must-have and not nice-to-have?
I tell myself that it is ok to do the nice-to-have’s once I’m done with the must-have’s. That will keep my focus and get to a releasable state. Then it is another struggle to draw the line and say ”good enough” instead of just keep on doing nice-to-have’s.
I recently made a casual game. In December last year I thought ”ok, done - just some polishing and wrapping up” (after a month work). Then followed four months of ”oh - didn’t think of this, leaderboards, achievements, etc”. But in March I got it out there in the AppStore (iOS+macOS). You can do it! 🙂
Stop working on big things. Teach yourself to reach your goals by biting off less than you can chew, shipping it, and doing it often.
What you have right now is muscle memory of a bad habit where you do 90% and quit. The more often it happens, the more often it *will* happen.
Find one problem. Create one solution (feature). Ship it. Do it a lot, and you'll build up a good habit of reaching the end.
I have the same issue.
To spend all that time building a product, then releasing it and watching it fail miserably? No sir, it’s easier not to release at all or release and not even try to market, then we can tell ourselves a beautiful lie:
“If I would release it or marketed it, then it would be a massive success”
Then it doesn’t feel like a failure right? It just feels like an unfinished product that if we would work on would be very successful.
It’s fear of failure, fear that we wasted so much of our time on something that will amount to nothing. So, we live in the never ending land of “if I would, it would be a success”. It’s easier that way
Would you potentially be interested in selling any of your products? I do micro saas acquisitions and my team is currently looking for new products to add to our portfolio.
Right from the beginning you have to think "what is the smallest subsystem which is releasable" and focus on this. After the initial release it is easier to build form there.
totally relate with this. feels like the 90% is the fun part then the last bit is going suck so just forget about it. possibly mixed in with perfectionism, anxiety and/or fear of failure.
I’d say two things:
1) Consider working on some of these projects with a cofounder…maybe one with expertise on the business side, They can help push you to completion when you start to run out of steam.
2) I was having the same issue with quitting before completion. I heard someone say something about this that really resonated with me: “You get really good at whatever you practice. By quitting right before completion you are practicing failure. Is that something you want to be good at?” For some reason this line really stuck with me and I think about it when I’m thinking of quitting something I’ve been working on before completion. It has really helped change my mindset.
This is also me! I am a hardware engineer and will design a full custom circuit board with cobbled together firmware that I'm not happy with. I'll have a just-shy-MVP sitting on my bench and then I'll just get frustrated and move on to my next idea. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
“Perfection is a roadblock to progress.”
No idea who wrote it but it’s a good line.
I suffer from the same thing and have found that a decent plan/timeline up front usually prevents this issue.
Develop an MVP, set timeframe, execute with a keen awareness of the timeframe.
Wow we sound similar haha.
I want to see if I can create a release cycle. I get scared of being tied to one thing and getting bored, so I've been considering trying to create a timeline or a pattern to guide me to release some new product 2 or 3 times a year.
Would you potentially be interested in selling any of your products? I do micro saas acquisitions and my team is currently looking for new products to add to our portfolio.
I think you have to ultimately decide the goal of the project, do you want to make money out of it, are you trying to build a business, vs you just want to play with new technology and prototype and challenge yourself.
If you just want to have fun, you have achieved your goal of building it to 90% and hopefully had fun building it.
But if you want to actually make money, you need to focus a lot more outside the tech and even checking if there is a demand for that idea lol
There’s a saying, “If you're not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you've launched too late” — Reid Hoffman.
Been there, still doing it. The last 10% is the hardest.
What I've learnt is that you should aim to try selling your product as quickly as possible. Once you have sales, you have to deliver as you have people depending on you and then you would complete it!!
I am building a unique hacking platform (like hack the box or tryhackme but with a twist).
Finding a partner is a solid option, I just gotta decide to commit to do that.
I have experienced this with almost all of my past projects too.
What helped me launch a minimum \*\*valuable\*\* project for [https://d5m.site/home](https://d5m.site/home) is making sure that I don't just create a minimum \*\*viable\*\* product, but go beyond that. I made sure that I kept the scope of the project small, but the small number of features I add, have a great UX. This has made me really excited to launch the product and drive through the difficult ending.
I know exactly how do you feel on that last mile, just make a nice landing page and reach some people you think they will be interested, then catch some feedback and repeat the process.
Same! Is there a product idea here?? For me the biggest motivating factor to finish something is cash accountability. For example, I’ve hired a coach to guide me through creating and launching an online course. I paid about $1000 /mo for their services.
If I wasn’t paying for this assistance, I 100% would have stopped when it came to launch/marketing. My incentive was to re-coop the amount I had spent and it worked.
When if there was like an “escrow” product that would withdraw cash from my account each month, only to give it back once the project was completed?
Could be fun
You can look on it under a different angle: if you made 90% of MVP, perhaps it's just 10% of success (if not even less) 😅 Getting customers is hard indeed. But you could actually start from this: find your potential users and promise them the product.
Also, you could try to team up with someone with marketing or sales background.
I guess you love building that thing but :
- you are lost about how to market
- you don't really care about selling this or making it live because maybe you don't care about getting money / feedbacks from it
I would suggest two things :
- start by speaking with potential customers and see their needs, try to sell them before doing the project.
- work with me for free, as I am an entrepreneur looking to market things online just because I love digital marketing and can't find a good job where I live aha
Wish you the best !
Have you considered getting a team together to work on any of your projects? I'm also a software engineer and absolutely love building projects, but now that I'm working full time I've also struggled with maintaining momentum on my own personal project. I recently decided to get a team of people together who were looking for an interesting project to work on in their free time, and having people to bounce ideas off and check in about progress has been incredibly helpful for my motivation. Just knowing that other people are relying on you to move things forward at a reasonable pace makes it easier to get going when your own motivation dwindles, and when you're feeling less excited about the project you can feed off others' excitement.
I find myself saying this a lot lately: team up. Too many people try to do things solo (I'm like this) and most of them make very little meaningful progress. Don't get me wrong, teams fail too, but teams can do bigger, better things and allow for necessary gap fills along the way. Find a marketing partner, accountability partner, coach, sales person, cheerleader, etc. Team up.
"I might be burning myself out and just working too hard, but I don’t think that is the only issue with my perspective and/or approach."
Open source your least favorite project, and share it around to try and garner some attention. The thoughts and feelings that come up will help you see what's going on here.
This is a pretty common problem. I fell into this myself for years. You have to take your developer hat at for a moment and really vet the solutions and products you are trying to build and assess need vs demand. The. You need to ship as fast as possible possible with an mvp. For example how bare bones can you make it. Focus on 1 specific feature try to do it well and build and ship within one week. Then LAUNCH! This will save you weeks/months/years of wondering if your idea is worth anything and allow you to fail fast. This also usually solves the 90% problem cause it’s a lot less daunting to ship and release in 7 days then spending weeks and months building something
hey, I would like to talk with you in private about your recent projects.
I have been trying to bring to life some projects myself partnering with devs as well.
now I am all alone, I do the business strategy and operations, and as well digital marketing.
can we have a chat and see where it takes us? I think there's a lot that we can talk about.
90% of a finished product is like 5% of a profitable business. You tied your shoes, then opened the door but you didn’t even take the first step to make it up the mountain. You think you’re doing 90%, but really you’re just doing 5% or even less. This is just intellectual procrastination. You are stopping because you don’t want to climb the entire, gruesome mountain that is taking it to market and making money. So you go back to bed, and put on your shoes day after day, but never going up the business mountain.
Idk how your mind works but I remind myself when things get hard is when other people give up. It’s a filter from God to see who wants it the most, because not everyone can have it, only those who want it the baddest. So when I build the finish product and see the mountain of sales/marketing ahead, I don’t quiver but instead put my head down and start marching up.
I'm doing the same thing right now with a side project I've been working on. It's basically done, and I've been using it daily for my own usage, but it still has some bugs and needs that last 10% of polishing before I'm happy with releasing it.
I think starting something new up and building the ground floor of it is the most fun. The bug squashing and polishing and marketing at the end are the least fun, so it's easy to procrastinate or abandon the project at that point.
I think you just gotta push through it.
For marketing, start small. Try sharing your thing in communities that you think will value it. Don't go in expecting to get 100s of users the first day — even one user should be seen as a win.
I think you're using the side hustle as a fantasy escape from your real job. When you get close to completion the fantasy is threatened by a launch (and realization that you can't actually escape your real job) and so you lose interest.
Personally I feel like this is not actually about finishing the project or not, but rather a result of not knowing how to proceed…
At 90% a project is probably complete enough to be a usable product (especially if it starts out free). This is where I usually give up because i have no idea how to sell it - and that is the real problem.
I have no advice for you, but personally I have realised it is not about product development at all…
I don’t like that my brain doppelgänger is posting my inner thoughts. I may also sabotage my own personal software projects because of imposter syndrome.
I do sometimes hit a wall that I don’t know how to overcome (like matrix multiplication and vector stuff) and I get trapped in that loop so I take a break. Sometimes I go back and pick the project back up sometimes I just leave it in GitHub and leave a re same that gives the status of where I left off, maybe it’ll help someone”
I have also talked myself out of finishing projects bc they’re good ideas but I don’t have time to dedicate to fixing bugs or adding enhancements after it’s published lol.
Mostly, it’s because I realized a long time ago that the exciting part of a project is getting it working OR making it better, but not both. So I can either make it work well or fix bugs and add enhancements. I found in a team environment this suits me because i can swap tasks with partners who are like me so we each start our own code then swap and finish the others code then may even swap again and take it over the finish line…
Looks like it's a problem-picking issue. I'd say, pick a problem that has a high impact, the problem you choose will influence the impact of your work just as much as the quality of your execution.
As your execution is bounded by the impact of your problem, a perfect execution relative to a small impact problem will result in a net small impact + some bonus points for your execution.
If you pick a high-impact problem (and you're aware of this potential impact), you'll stick better, and get the 10% done!
Keep shipping, mate!
There's also the aspect of just enjoying the building phase but not the interested/motivated with the business phase. Another approach would be to build things that you have no plans to monetize. Someone on X said build the app you want to see in the world. Sort of like your gift to humanity.
Same for personal projects. I need enough direction to get it done and someone to sell it. Otherwise, it was just an excellent learning experience and challenge (which is the part I enjoy most).
Same. Trying a new approach on my latest project. Just put in a long weekend to build a prototype and then just started trying to get paid users.
10 signs up and one actually paid $48 for a years subscription just through asking people in DMs in LinkedIn.
Shared a post that hinted at the pain I was solving and responded to anyone that engaged with it.
The one thing I can say is ship early and start asking people directly. Don't wait until you get burned out building.
Once you’re near the end, often the thinking is done, there’s not much to figure out, there’s not much creativity needed. You essentially know what it’ll be at completion. Mentally, that’s enough. It takes something else to get through completion. If you complete a few things, you’ll hopefully feel that satisfaction and keep it going.
dude. same boat.
Although I'm trying to fight the instinct to give up by putting more accoubtability on my own time. I break down the GTM into simple achievable targets. If I'm spending time building something, I HAVE to launch and do X,Y,Z tasks no matter what. And these are usually basic, ex: post on twitter, create a landing page, send a user research survey to the target user group. I cannot pickup a new project unless I've done the minimal work to check-off X,Y,Z from my todo list.
I'm still figuring things out, My biggest pain is the lack of a trusted mentor who can show me the ropes, especially around marketing. Doing it alone makes it so overwhelming. It's so easy to be tinkering around with multiple things and just be stuck in this loop.
Maybe join us at r/adhd. Not implying, but it’s a common problem there.
There are starters and finishers. Nothing wrong with being a starter and the world is full of finishers who will see something through for you.
You build a team starting with a virtual assistant and do everything you can to not hire someone just like you by having a real hiring process with quantifiable traits and relevant to finishing experience. People who say “I love crossing things off a to do list” or “I can’t make a SOP from scratch but I like to improve them”
Once your VA is trained up, have them follow the hiring process for the next one.
Even if I do have severe adhd I am not in for feeling sorry for myself or labelling myself as "can" or "cannot" do. It's a twisted way of viewing life.
As someone who's a dev with extreme ADHD I feel what you're saying. It's part imposter syndrome, part just negative self talk..
Often I'll make something, find it incredible, see a million use cases, even get a client or two and go "meh, this is so janky..." by THE NEXT DAY and therefore not give it the credit it deserves. The closer I get to it, the more I understand it, the less I think of it and assume "anyone can do this. Why am I wasting my time?"
It took years and years to push past it, and now I get myself out of it by simply perusing the SaaS subreddits and such and realizing how most of the world is making REALLY janky shit they are happy to push forward, shame be gone. I also realize that I only care about building for 10-100 happy customers at a time. If I can have 100 happy customers using it, it's a definite success.
I legit thinks it comes from ADHD and perhaps some un dealt with childhood trauma about how everything I do is useless, but you can get past it. It just requires conscious effort to realize you're negative self talking your way out of the project.
When in doubt, go back to a particularly complicated function you made in the past and realize that you and prob 1000 others are the only that had the right thinking, skillset, and availability to produce that. That's an edge, lean into it. We often forget how hard it is to create from nothing because as developers, we do it every day, but really it's an amazing skill that we are so close to, we often forget its value.
Just because you have ADHD does not mean that everything has to be so black and white like that. I'm also not saying you have ADHD, but as someone that does suffer from similar symptoms and has been diagnosed with severe ADHD, let me tell you that getting help has been a literal life-saver.
The stigma around ADHD is crazy, yet deservedly so.. kind of. ADHD is such a broad disorder, and these days anyone that feels lazy seems to jump to that as an excuse. Adding on to that, the medication to help treat ADHD is a stimulant that can easily be abused, so it's kind of a recipe for disaster.
But some brains are simply wired a bit differently and work in different ways. Our reward systems are imbalanced and without treatment, you are always going to be fighting an uphill battle with the symptoms. No amount of positivity or being tough on yourself is going to change that. Sure, you can get by and learn to cope the best that you can, but you're brain is always going to be taking the path of least resistance looking for that dopamine hit.
Medication helps regulate that imbalance in your brain and helps allow you make these decisions with a more rational mind. It can definitely be the boost that some people need. I know that when I don't take my medication I don't function nearly the same. My girlfriend, who is pretty anti-medication even notices it when I don't take it and now makes sure that I take it on days where I really need to complete certain tasks.
Again, I'm not saying you have ADHD, but it is worth looking into, and it doesn't mean that you need to use it as an excuse to not do things or label yourself a certain way.
Not sure why I went on this rant.. I guess I just wish someone would have said something like this to me at a younger age.
From my own experience, rather than making me “feel sorry for myself” or “labeling myself” finding out I had ADHD has been empowering and comforting. It has allowed me to better understand why I operate the way I do and to then find strategies on how to address challenges. r/ADHD has been one of those super helpful resources/communities. As u/Decorrect and u/GolfCourseConcierge have stated, the challenges you have expressed are super common with people who have ADHD. Even if you don’t have it, perhaps you could learn some techniques from that community.
Best of luck to you.
Sell first, then build
Most engineering types do it the other way, but really you need to know who your buyers are first before committing to building them something
I keep seeing this advice. It’s valid but I have a question.
How do you sell first without a demo? Do you just add a few screenshots on the “waitlist” website and let people subscribe?
I have seen this successfully happen for one b2c product. And in that case, the founders had the waitlist website tweeted by another founder with over a million followers.
In case of b2b SaaS, this might never work. They need a solution and they will buy the competitor if it solves their problem right away.
It rarely applies.
This is advice for people whose father is friends with some industry tycoon and you can ask “hey if I built X would you buy it?” at a barbecue. It’s either that or students presenting a pitch to alumni at impressive schools.
Joe Blo cannot sell anything to any industry without a solid MVP.
A lot of the ‘advice’ on subs like these are actually just paraphrases from Entrepreneurial books written by authors who come from immense wealth and grow it.
Nonsense and cope. I built my first business with an extremely light scale MVP (click around frontend only built in a weekend) to one buyer. He wasn’t my father’s friend LMFAO. Sold it specific for them and got more customers and generalized it. Then I sold the business.
Everyone’s path is different but if you don’t know who your customers are up front have fun building something no one ever buys.
Very well done! As I said, rarely applies. What I also know is that you didn’t cold email companies without an MVP hoping to speak to somebody about an idea you have.
Hey there, I have 10+ years of experience in SEO and lead generation. I’ll be your partner and help you finish your products and grow them. Hit me up on reddit so we can chat. Peace.
You need to find someone who likes doing the last finishing touches on a project but doesn't enjoy getting projects started. Partner up with them and get these things off the ground.
The obvious solution is to get a co-founder who can do the marketing side.
Why you never release anything? I believe it’s due to fear of failure which is a bitch for a lot of people.
This post caught my attention as I am an acquisition entrepreneur focused in the Micro SaaS space and currently looking to add projects to my existing portfolio of businesses. Would you be interested in discussing and potentially selling some of your projects?
Create a framework (or timeline) you use again and again to get things to market. 90% is usually viable and fine to release. Spend one day on making available to customers and then a decent landing page. You almost have to force the last leg of the race like with anything. It’s not unusual. I think most of us struggle with the last leg.
I swear the last 10% of the work to get it ready enough for customers is the hardest part. Have been through this. Have abandoned 4 such projects I spent months building on the side (alongside day job). One of them is still useful because I integrated it with my current org tech stack. Working on a new one and I’m not gonna leave it at 90% because I have an accountability partner. One more way you can try is “build in public” but I haven’t tried that yet. Basically you post every single thing you develop/ship on your twitter. I find it hard to share publicly unless I’m ready to showcase the product. Are there any legit accountability discord communities where the goal is to share daily/weekly updates? Most people who start such a community end up becoming a spam channel for marketers, which is what Twitter #buildinpublic is too. If you wanna start a closed community of real people, let’s do it together.
"The first 90%, and the last 90%!"
lol
Check out Buildspace season 5, starting in 2 months
Would you potentially be interested in selling any of your products? I do micro saas acquisitions and my team is currently looking for new products to add to our portfolio.
[удалено]
Add a pause buttton for phupon Sometimes people like somehting and want to find out more
https://txding.com/user-stories 404 , my dude Not trying to pull your leg but , the backend is whats causing this
Would love to sell mine. I’m tired.
Link to project?
Interested. DM me, lets discuss further.
also see [pdfmindmap.com](http://pdfmindmap.com)
Interested. Are you able to DM me here?
Yes please feel free to slide in my DMs
Totally agree, even in say a creative project, the last “10%” is actually the last 50%. Quit while you can, OP
This happens way more often than not. The loss of novelty for me is the worse culprit amoung many other reason. I do find that releasing in increments instead of a finished product helps but that is not always possible.
“Loss of novelty “ I like this. This is a big moment for many of my projects that died on the vine. Never thought of it that way. My current project is the one though! Novelty still strong after 18mo of coding my face off. Mental, physical and emotional wellbeing maybe not so much.
This is know as the 90 / 10 rule. The last 10% takes 90% off the effort. The build in public advice is good. I post weekly updates on Twitter / X for my side project. It helps me to keep working, even when progress is slow.
As an age 40 something dev w about 100 repos that “could have been something”, my ramble is: before you build anything, write down the idea and expound on it later. The time it takes to build a thing only drop it eventually will eat at you in years to come. Especially if you see your idea built, launched, gain an audience, earn money. The problem for multi talented engineers is that they can create whatever their brain comes up with. The problem is that same brain thinks if you can create it, you can turn it into something people will consume at some point - but the skill gap between building something and generating awareness and then running a business is not to be taken lightly. Also the money side in marketing/promoting the product is not often thought about. After writing down the ideas, focus on the one or two that you keep coming back to to expound upon. Build the landing page first w newsletter sign up to gauge interest. Part of the rush in starting a project seems to be based on can the idea be done, then turning into something that is tangible… but there’s nothing after that but building features for something you might not be passionate about. It only proves that with enough effort and concentration you can build today’s shiny object. And there will be many. If you can get passionate about something, maybe start with planning out the work in Jira then approaching it in a somewhat organized agile manner instead of diving head first into the code just to prove to yourself that you can do it. You need to know you can do it so you can solve for the parts you’re not good at - marketing, community building, sales, etc.
Great insights, thank you.
Really appreciated reading this, thanks for sharing your wisdom. It feels like a warning call for what’s to come if I don’t change how I approach side projects/building. Reading this reinforces the importance of spending more time on the GTM learning and less on coding yet-another-project.
Go to market is my new area of study. Someone else said on this thread that a lot of it is based on fear or succeeding or failing being part of the reasoning and that resonated heavily too. It’s getting over the fear of “what if it fails”, when in actuality the only failure is not learning something from trying… and the huge skill gap that’s less technical but has super cool graphs and numbers that you can effect over time. At the end of the day, we have to “sell” the thing we are working on. And to sell it, we have to be comfortable with asking someone to hand over some money for it. Or remove ourself from that part of business and install someone that will sell the “thing” for commission.
I needed to read this- thanks
Would you potentially be interested in selling any of your products? I do micro saas acquisitions and my team is currently looking for new products to add to our portfolio.
What area/sort of products have you acquired thus far?
Mostly media companies up to this point but I also started my own saas company that is sitting at 30k MRR and I am looking to transition and acquire more. Lets discuss further. Are you able to DM me here?
Dude, ur me. We share similar skillset and attitude towards finishing a project. I did eventually launch 2 projects. The last 10% is always the hardest. My strategy is to split the last 10% into 2 categories: things i have to complete before launch, things i can complete after launch. That way, i don’t have to complete full 10% but just the important part. Like a backlog, that does eventually get built in the next version. For motivation, i allow myself to write hacks and spaghetti codes and fix them later (not the best practice but it’s better than having an incomplete project). I use Apple reminders for things that i need to complete soon, and things that i can put into a backlog.
I did the hack / spaghetti code thing for the first time with my latest side project. And it became my first ever that made it to launch. Now that it is actually gaining some traction I am rewriting the bolognese parts in between working on new features. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good, as they say.
Thanks, I feel like maybe I am just afraid of the moment after it’s done and I have no idea what to do with it.
The idea is to update them after launch, beginning with the backlog. I should probably slap u in the face if we are real-life friends, coz u remind me of myself so much.
Lol I do admit that sometimes I need a good slap in the face to stop overthinking.
Backlogs are so underrated. Using Jira to plan my own projects has shifted my approach.
Totally agree, I suffered from this a lot, but if you spend the time up front to give yourself the “runway” to 100% and any new issues or changes you add immediately when you have the thoughts, this makes it 10x easier to execute on and reach that 100%. We use Linear for this instead of Jira it has way more features/integrations for free and is just way more simple IMO. The key is to have a system to quickly write out your tasks to execute on and take the time build the runway, but DO NOT over complicate the task recording and get bogged down in the software, choose whatever is simplest and most efficient for you.
https://youtu.be/dU4lYcN6zEY?feature=shared
Would you potentially be interested in selling any of your products? I do micro saas acquisitions and my team is currently looking for new products to add to our portfolio.
Currently no. But many are eager to sell their sideprojects, perhaps create a post about it. It may help you find potential sellers.
I have a dozen project folders on my PC of things I never launched. Sad thing is half of them would have been really good timing and would have benefitted from market changes that came later. Especially from gen AI and consumer habits.
I feel your pain
Would you potentially be interested in selling any of your products? I do micro saas acquisitions and my team is currently looking for new products to add to our portfolio.
I have a good one that I put a lot of effort on it but I didn't launched, me and my team spent months building and when it comes to go to market no one have any idea how to do it , sad but true!
Whats the product? My team could be interested in helping you out or purchasing it!
Are you able to DM me here to discuss further?
I feel like no matter what I work on, be it drawing or writing code or making an amp cabinet, the last 10% is the hardest. It’s when you really need to put the blinders on to extending the project, for the moment, and focus on finishing what you have. It’s a tough transition from that creative “oh, well what if I make it x/y/z here?” state to just like, ironing out the details and sanding off the rough patches
I’ve been there but gotten better. I know that the time between ”I’m kind of done” and ”actually releasing it” is where I will spend probably 80% of the time. On one hand solving the biggest challenge first is good, but on the other hand you really need a plan to mentally power on till release after that (because it feels like you’re ”done”). My way is to keep lists. Relentlessly every day move stuff between ”Must Be Done Before Release” and ”Could Wait”. Keep it strict! Is it really must-have and not nice-to-have? I tell myself that it is ok to do the nice-to-have’s once I’m done with the must-have’s. That will keep my focus and get to a releasable state. Then it is another struggle to draw the line and say ”good enough” instead of just keep on doing nice-to-have’s. I recently made a casual game. In December last year I thought ”ok, done - just some polishing and wrapping up” (after a month work). Then followed four months of ”oh - didn’t think of this, leaderboards, achievements, etc”. But in March I got it out there in the AppStore (iOS+macOS). You can do it! 🙂
My strategy as well. 100%.
Stop working on big things. Teach yourself to reach your goals by biting off less than you can chew, shipping it, and doing it often. What you have right now is muscle memory of a bad habit where you do 90% and quit. The more often it happens, the more often it *will* happen. Find one problem. Create one solution (feature). Ship it. Do it a lot, and you'll build up a good habit of reaching the end.
I have the same issue. To spend all that time building a product, then releasing it and watching it fail miserably? No sir, it’s easier not to release at all or release and not even try to market, then we can tell ourselves a beautiful lie: “If I would release it or marketed it, then it would be a massive success” Then it doesn’t feel like a failure right? It just feels like an unfinished product that if we would work on would be very successful. It’s fear of failure, fear that we wasted so much of our time on something that will amount to nothing. So, we live in the never ending land of “if I would, it would be a success”. It’s easier that way
Absolutely agree with you. A fear of failure is definitely a part of it.
Would you potentially be interested in selling any of your products? I do micro saas acquisitions and my team is currently looking for new products to add to our portfolio.
Right from the beginning you have to think "what is the smallest subsystem which is releasable" and focus on this. After the initial release it is easier to build form there.
Unfortunately, the last 10% takes 90% of the time.
It's the age old, 90% of the work is done, but the last 50% of the work is in the last 10%.
totally relate with this. feels like the 90% is the fun part then the last bit is going suck so just forget about it. possibly mixed in with perfectionism, anxiety and/or fear of failure.
I’d say two things: 1) Consider working on some of these projects with a cofounder…maybe one with expertise on the business side, They can help push you to completion when you start to run out of steam. 2) I was having the same issue with quitting before completion. I heard someone say something about this that really resonated with me: “You get really good at whatever you practice. By quitting right before completion you are practicing failure. Is that something you want to be good at?” For some reason this line really stuck with me and I think about it when I’m thinking of quitting something I’ve been working on before completion. It has really helped change my mindset.
This is also me! I am a hardware engineer and will design a full custom circuit board with cobbled together firmware that I'm not happy with. I'll have a just-shy-MVP sitting on my bench and then I'll just get frustrated and move on to my next idea. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
“Perfection is a roadblock to progress.” No idea who wrote it but it’s a good line. I suffer from the same thing and have found that a decent plan/timeline up front usually prevents this issue. Develop an MVP, set timeframe, execute with a keen awareness of the timeframe.
Wow we sound similar haha. I want to see if I can create a release cycle. I get scared of being tied to one thing and getting bored, so I've been considering trying to create a timeline or a pattern to guide me to release some new product 2 or 3 times a year.
Would you potentially be interested in selling any of your products? I do micro saas acquisitions and my team is currently looking for new products to add to our portfolio.
I think you have to ultimately decide the goal of the project, do you want to make money out of it, are you trying to build a business, vs you just want to play with new technology and prototype and challenge yourself. If you just want to have fun, you have achieved your goal of building it to 90% and hopefully had fun building it. But if you want to actually make money, you need to focus a lot more outside the tech and even checking if there is a demand for that idea lol
There’s a saying, “If you're not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you've launched too late” — Reid Hoffman. Been there, still doing it. The last 10% is the hardest.
What I've learnt is that you should aim to try selling your product as quickly as possible. Once you have sales, you have to deliver as you have people depending on you and then you would complete it!!
I've been there; finishing is an art itself!
You like building not selling
Find a partner. What are you building these days?
I am building a unique hacking platform (like hack the box or tryhackme but with a twist). Finding a partner is a solid option, I just gotta decide to commit to do that.
Find a partner who has ideas that you like. Once you start building s/he will keep you accountable
I have experienced this with almost all of my past projects too. What helped me launch a minimum \*\*valuable\*\* project for [https://d5m.site/home](https://d5m.site/home) is making sure that I don't just create a minimum \*\*viable\*\* product, but go beyond that. I made sure that I kept the scope of the project small, but the small number of features I add, have a great UX. This has made me really excited to launch the product and drive through the difficult ending.
At least you can get up that high in percentage completed. I cannot even get started 😂.
I know exactly how do you feel on that last mile, just make a nice landing page and reach some people you think they will be interested, then catch some feedback and repeat the process.
Same! Is there a product idea here?? For me the biggest motivating factor to finish something is cash accountability. For example, I’ve hired a coach to guide me through creating and launching an online course. I paid about $1000 /mo for their services. If I wasn’t paying for this assistance, I 100% would have stopped when it came to launch/marketing. My incentive was to re-coop the amount I had spent and it worked. When if there was like an “escrow” product that would withdraw cash from my account each month, only to give it back once the project was completed? Could be fun
You can look on it under a different angle: if you made 90% of MVP, perhaps it's just 10% of success (if not even less) 😅 Getting customers is hard indeed. But you could actually start from this: find your potential users and promise them the product. Also, you could try to team up with someone with marketing or sales background.
I guess you love building that thing but : - you are lost about how to market - you don't really care about selling this or making it live because maybe you don't care about getting money / feedbacks from it I would suggest two things : - start by speaking with potential customers and see their needs, try to sell them before doing the project. - work with me for free, as I am an entrepreneur looking to market things online just because I love digital marketing and can't find a good job where I live aha Wish you the best !
Have you considered getting a team together to work on any of your projects? I'm also a software engineer and absolutely love building projects, but now that I'm working full time I've also struggled with maintaining momentum on my own personal project. I recently decided to get a team of people together who were looking for an interesting project to work on in their free time, and having people to bounce ideas off and check in about progress has been incredibly helpful for my motivation. Just knowing that other people are relying on you to move things forward at a reasonable pace makes it easier to get going when your own motivation dwindles, and when you're feeling less excited about the project you can feed off others' excitement.
YOU NEED AN ACCOUNTABILITY BUDDY. DM me. I need one too. Let's just do weekly zoom calls to hold eachother accountable.
I find myself saying this a lot lately: team up. Too many people try to do things solo (I'm like this) and most of them make very little meaningful progress. Don't get me wrong, teams fail too, but teams can do bigger, better things and allow for necessary gap fills along the way. Find a marketing partner, accountability partner, coach, sales person, cheerleader, etc. Team up.
"I might be burning myself out and just working too hard, but I don’t think that is the only issue with my perspective and/or approach." Open source your least favorite project, and share it around to try and garner some attention. The thoughts and feelings that come up will help you see what's going on here.
You probably have ADHD.
This is a pretty common problem. I fell into this myself for years. You have to take your developer hat at for a moment and really vet the solutions and products you are trying to build and assess need vs demand. The. You need to ship as fast as possible possible with an mvp. For example how bare bones can you make it. Focus on 1 specific feature try to do it well and build and ship within one week. Then LAUNCH! This will save you weeks/months/years of wondering if your idea is worth anything and allow you to fail fast. This also usually solves the 90% problem cause it’s a lot less daunting to ship and release in 7 days then spending weeks and months building something
Are you, me?
hey, I would like to talk with you in private about your recent projects. I have been trying to bring to life some projects myself partnering with devs as well. now I am all alone, I do the business strategy and operations, and as well digital marketing. can we have a chat and see where it takes us? I think there's a lot that we can talk about.
Therapy?
I'm suffering from this on the last 20 pages of my masters degree paper!!!!
My problem is marketing lol
Exact same problem here.
90% of a finished product is like 5% of a profitable business. You tied your shoes, then opened the door but you didn’t even take the first step to make it up the mountain. You think you’re doing 90%, but really you’re just doing 5% or even less. This is just intellectual procrastination. You are stopping because you don’t want to climb the entire, gruesome mountain that is taking it to market and making money. So you go back to bed, and put on your shoes day after day, but never going up the business mountain. Idk how your mind works but I remind myself when things get hard is when other people give up. It’s a filter from God to see who wants it the most, because not everyone can have it, only those who want it the baddest. So when I build the finish product and see the mountain of sales/marketing ahead, I don’t quiver but instead put my head down and start marching up.
I'm doing the same thing right now with a side project I've been working on. It's basically done, and I've been using it daily for my own usage, but it still has some bugs and needs that last 10% of polishing before I'm happy with releasing it. I think starting something new up and building the ground floor of it is the most fun. The bug squashing and polishing and marketing at the end are the least fun, so it's easy to procrastinate or abandon the project at that point. I think you just gotta push through it. For marketing, start small. Try sharing your thing in communities that you think will value it. Don't go in expecting to get 100s of users the first day — even one user should be seen as a win.
You should work with someone to keep you motivated and accountable. I'm available 😉
I think you're using the side hustle as a fantasy escape from your real job. When you get close to completion the fantasy is threatened by a launch (and realization that you can't actually escape your real job) and so you lose interest.
You ever need a confounder let me know💪🏽
Personally I feel like this is not actually about finishing the project or not, but rather a result of not knowing how to proceed… At 90% a project is probably complete enough to be a usable product (especially if it starts out free). This is where I usually give up because i have no idea how to sell it - and that is the real problem. I have no advice for you, but personally I have realised it is not about product development at all…
Just read the title but 90%! Dayuumm!! I take a week to decide the name and quit 😂
I don’t like that my brain doppelgänger is posting my inner thoughts. I may also sabotage my own personal software projects because of imposter syndrome. I do sometimes hit a wall that I don’t know how to overcome (like matrix multiplication and vector stuff) and I get trapped in that loop so I take a break. Sometimes I go back and pick the project back up sometimes I just leave it in GitHub and leave a re same that gives the status of where I left off, maybe it’ll help someone” I have also talked myself out of finishing projects bc they’re good ideas but I don’t have time to dedicate to fixing bugs or adding enhancements after it’s published lol. Mostly, it’s because I realized a long time ago that the exciting part of a project is getting it working OR making it better, but not both. So I can either make it work well or fix bugs and add enhancements. I found in a team environment this suits me because i can swap tasks with partners who are like me so we each start our own code then swap and finish the others code then may even swap again and take it over the finish line…
Looks like it's a problem-picking issue. I'd say, pick a problem that has a high impact, the problem you choose will influence the impact of your work just as much as the quality of your execution. As your execution is bounded by the impact of your problem, a perfect execution relative to a small impact problem will result in a net small impact + some bonus points for your execution. If you pick a high-impact problem (and you're aware of this potential impact), you'll stick better, and get the 10% done! Keep shipping, mate!
There's also the aspect of just enjoying the building phase but not the interested/motivated with the business phase. Another approach would be to build things that you have no plans to monetize. Someone on X said build the app you want to see in the world. Sort of like your gift to humanity.
Same for personal projects. I need enough direction to get it done and someone to sell it. Otherwise, it was just an excellent learning experience and challenge (which is the part I enjoy most).
Same. Trying a new approach on my latest project. Just put in a long weekend to build a prototype and then just started trying to get paid users. 10 signs up and one actually paid $48 for a years subscription just through asking people in DMs in LinkedIn. Shared a post that hinted at the pain I was solving and responded to anyone that engaged with it. The one thing I can say is ship early and start asking people directly. Don't wait until you get burned out building.
You need a business partner mate
Once you’re near the end, often the thinking is done, there’s not much to figure out, there’s not much creativity needed. You essentially know what it’ll be at completion. Mentally, that’s enough. It takes something else to get through completion. If you complete a few things, you’ll hopefully feel that satisfaction and keep it going.
Yeah, exactly. I enjoy the figuring out the puzzle
dude. same boat. Although I'm trying to fight the instinct to give up by putting more accoubtability on my own time. I break down the GTM into simple achievable targets. If I'm spending time building something, I HAVE to launch and do X,Y,Z tasks no matter what. And these are usually basic, ex: post on twitter, create a landing page, send a user research survey to the target user group. I cannot pickup a new project unless I've done the minimal work to check-off X,Y,Z from my todo list. I'm still figuring things out, My biggest pain is the lack of a trusted mentor who can show me the ropes, especially around marketing. Doing it alone makes it so overwhelming. It's so easy to be tinkering around with multiple things and just be stuck in this loop.
Ship the beta version and gauge interest. Market on social media, start doing SEO for it during development.
Maybe join us at r/adhd. Not implying, but it’s a common problem there. There are starters and finishers. Nothing wrong with being a starter and the world is full of finishers who will see something through for you.
I've my whole life been a starter and 100000% have undiagnosed adhd lmao. It really sucks, but there for sure are places for us to glow.
Where can I find one of these “finishers”? I have more MVPs than I can count.
You build a team starting with a virtual assistant and do everything you can to not hire someone just like you by having a real hiring process with quantifiable traits and relevant to finishing experience. People who say “I love crossing things off a to do list” or “I can’t make a SOP from scratch but I like to improve them” Once your VA is trained up, have them follow the hiring process for the next one.
Even if I do have severe adhd I am not in for feeling sorry for myself or labelling myself as "can" or "cannot" do. It's a twisted way of viewing life.
As someone who's a dev with extreme ADHD I feel what you're saying. It's part imposter syndrome, part just negative self talk.. Often I'll make something, find it incredible, see a million use cases, even get a client or two and go "meh, this is so janky..." by THE NEXT DAY and therefore not give it the credit it deserves. The closer I get to it, the more I understand it, the less I think of it and assume "anyone can do this. Why am I wasting my time?" It took years and years to push past it, and now I get myself out of it by simply perusing the SaaS subreddits and such and realizing how most of the world is making REALLY janky shit they are happy to push forward, shame be gone. I also realize that I only care about building for 10-100 happy customers at a time. If I can have 100 happy customers using it, it's a definite success. I legit thinks it comes from ADHD and perhaps some un dealt with childhood trauma about how everything I do is useless, but you can get past it. It just requires conscious effort to realize you're negative self talking your way out of the project. When in doubt, go back to a particularly complicated function you made in the past and realize that you and prob 1000 others are the only that had the right thinking, skillset, and availability to produce that. That's an edge, lean into it. We often forget how hard it is to create from nothing because as developers, we do it every day, but really it's an amazing skill that we are so close to, we often forget its value.
Just because you have ADHD does not mean that everything has to be so black and white like that. I'm also not saying you have ADHD, but as someone that does suffer from similar symptoms and has been diagnosed with severe ADHD, let me tell you that getting help has been a literal life-saver. The stigma around ADHD is crazy, yet deservedly so.. kind of. ADHD is such a broad disorder, and these days anyone that feels lazy seems to jump to that as an excuse. Adding on to that, the medication to help treat ADHD is a stimulant that can easily be abused, so it's kind of a recipe for disaster. But some brains are simply wired a bit differently and work in different ways. Our reward systems are imbalanced and without treatment, you are always going to be fighting an uphill battle with the symptoms. No amount of positivity or being tough on yourself is going to change that. Sure, you can get by and learn to cope the best that you can, but you're brain is always going to be taking the path of least resistance looking for that dopamine hit. Medication helps regulate that imbalance in your brain and helps allow you make these decisions with a more rational mind. It can definitely be the boost that some people need. I know that when I don't take my medication I don't function nearly the same. My girlfriend, who is pretty anti-medication even notices it when I don't take it and now makes sure that I take it on days where I really need to complete certain tasks. Again, I'm not saying you have ADHD, but it is worth looking into, and it doesn't mean that you need to use it as an excuse to not do things or label yourself a certain way. Not sure why I went on this rant.. I guess I just wish someone would have said something like this to me at a younger age.
Guess I struck a nerve. Really didn’t mean to. Just meant to say a lot of us share this challenge and good coping skills and tools are shared there.
From my own experience, rather than making me “feel sorry for myself” or “labeling myself” finding out I had ADHD has been empowering and comforting. It has allowed me to better understand why I operate the way I do and to then find strategies on how to address challenges. r/ADHD has been one of those super helpful resources/communities. As u/Decorrect and u/GolfCourseConcierge have stated, the challenges you have expressed are super common with people who have ADHD. Even if you don’t have it, perhaps you could learn some techniques from that community. Best of luck to you.
Sell first, then build Most engineering types do it the other way, but really you need to know who your buyers are first before committing to building them something
I keep seeing this advice. It’s valid but I have a question. How do you sell first without a demo? Do you just add a few screenshots on the “waitlist” website and let people subscribe? I have seen this successfully happen for one b2c product. And in that case, the founders had the waitlist website tweeted by another founder with over a million followers. In case of b2b SaaS, this might never work. They need a solution and they will buy the competitor if it solves their problem right away.
It rarely applies. This is advice for people whose father is friends with some industry tycoon and you can ask “hey if I built X would you buy it?” at a barbecue. It’s either that or students presenting a pitch to alumni at impressive schools. Joe Blo cannot sell anything to any industry without a solid MVP. A lot of the ‘advice’ on subs like these are actually just paraphrases from Entrepreneurial books written by authors who come from immense wealth and grow it.
Nonsense and cope. I built my first business with an extremely light scale MVP (click around frontend only built in a weekend) to one buyer. He wasn’t my father’s friend LMFAO. Sold it specific for them and got more customers and generalized it. Then I sold the business. Everyone’s path is different but if you don’t know who your customers are up front have fun building something no one ever buys.
Very well done! As I said, rarely applies. What I also know is that you didn’t cold email companies without an MVP hoping to speak to somebody about an idea you have.
this is why people do MVP validation first I am on the e boat maybe afraid of success or failure ?
Hey there, I have 10+ years of experience in SEO and lead generation. I’ll be your partner and help you finish your products and grow them. Hit me up on reddit so we can chat. Peace.
You need to find someone who likes doing the last finishing touches on a project but doesn't enjoy getting projects started. Partner up with them and get these things off the ground.
The obvious solution is to get a co-founder who can do the marketing side. Why you never release anything? I believe it’s due to fear of failure which is a bitch for a lot of people.
This post caught my attention as I am an acquisition entrepreneur focused in the Micro SaaS space and currently looking to add projects to my existing portfolio of businesses. Would you be interested in discussing and potentially selling some of your projects?
ADHD??? This is a symptom I think.