“If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.”
— This quote by Reid Hoffman, founder of Linkedin, has an equal number of supporters as it does dissidents. There are many examples of startups who took this advice only to be ushered more quickly to the deadpool. To me, this is OK. I am a believer in Mike Maples Jr.’s philosophy to fail fast and fail cheap. That is our only downside risk with 2taps, a simple bookmark app for the mobile web. That being said, in the face of failure, it is important to recover intelligently. The user knows best and will let you know what features should be on the roadmap and in what order. If you can take that information and execute on it, your users will reward you. (They will also forgive you if you are open and maintain a dialogue. Participation chains keep the conversation going.) In short, have the cojones to release fast and iterate often.
