Every so often someone messages me the same thing: "I'm about to launch my app, any advice before I put it out there?".
It's almost always someone building it at night, after work, with no paycheck riding on it. Great spot to be in: no noose around your neck, everything to win.
This is what I tell them. And it's not theory: it's what I learned by charging, failing and, more than once, crashing hard.
Ship it now, fail cheap
My first piece of advice is always the same: get it out early, fast and cheap. And be ready to fail just as fast and just as cheap.
What happens when you pour months and hopes into the perfect launch is that you still get the data you needed, just pricier and later. It doesn't stick, people don't sign up, you should've changed something else. And that's when it clicks: the perfect product doesn't exist. What exists is a product you'll be changing forever.
So even if you have money and time, act like you don't. Make every week real progress, not one more coat of polish on something nobody has tried yet.
Do you want glory or do you want money?
Before you go any further, answer this honestly: is this for glory or for money?
If it's for glory (an app that's going to unlock healthcare for the whole country, something that feeds your soul), great, but then it's a different road and you don't measure it in cash.
If you're thinking of it as a business, as someone who wants to make money with this, then move even faster. Because money and time are exactly what you don't have to spare.
There's no right answer. What kills you is not knowing which of the 2 games you're playing.
Don't test it on your friends
When you ship it, listen to the customer. But watch who you're asking.
Your friends will tell you it's amazing. So will your family. They love you, they go easy on you, they're not going to break your heart. That data is useless.
The truth is with strangers. People who owe you nothing and who, if your product costs money, vote with their wallet. That answer, cold and with zero affection, is the only one that tells you whether you've really got something.
No recurrence, it's a glass with a hole in it
Here's a mistake I almost made myself. When I was itching to start something, I came up with a platform that matched people who had a car with people who wanted to learn to drive. Me in the middle. Sounded fucking great: the learner pays the car owner, both win, the platform wins.
The flaw? How many times in your life do you learn to drive? Once. There was no recurrence.
And a business without recurrence is a glass with a hole in the bottom: you pour in new customers all day, but it never fills up. Nobody comes back, nobody buys again. Doing laundry, ordering on Rappi, Uber, Netflix: that's where people come back. That's what keeps a business standing.
B2B or B2C, look for that: make it recurring. And if you can, make it mass-market and emotional. Those 3 are what made me decide where to start my own thing.
Vitamin or shot?
There are 2 kinds of product: the vitamin and the shot.
The vitamin is a "nice to have". I take it, it's good for me, but if I skip it nothing happens. It's optional, and optional gets put off.
The shot is for a toothache. When it really hurts, you take it even if they jab it into your gum, even if it costs a thousand soles, even if you didn't want it. "Make this pain go away and I'll pay."
Build the shot. The faster you find a real pain (a nasty one, the kind that keeps you up at night), the faster the sale comes, the repeat purchase, the money.
That's what you're after in the end: the "shut up and take my money". Everything else (clean code, design, the brilliant idea) is worth nothing if nobody reaches for their wallet.
You're in the best possible spot: something of your own, no noose around your neck, fired up. So stop babying it.
Ship it. Ask strangers. See if they come back. And if people pull out their wallet without you begging, you've got something.
The rest you fix on the field.
