Perfection Is The Enemy Of Startups
Why you should never make anything 100%
I gave this advice recently:
Never get to 100%.
Counterintuitive, right?
Don’t you want a high quality output???
Isn’t perfection and attention to detail why Apple is such an amazing brand?
If I put my name on something, I want it to be great.
I, too, have thought all those things.
Nevertheless, here’s my advice to startup founders:
Get the project, product, playbook, or initiative to 90-95% complete. Then stop.
In high school and college, I agonized over papers, editing and re-editing for hours.
In the startup world, I had to train myself to value speed over quality.
I had to leave things with occasional typos, inconsistent formatting, outdated or missing information, the wrong logo or brand color, the wording not quite right, and 100 other imperfections.
It pained me. And I did it anyway.
Why?
Maniacal perfectionism will sink your startup.
It will slow you down, burn you out, and keep you from learning quickly!
Here Are 3 Reasons To Avoid Perfection At Startups:
By the time you finish a project, it’s already out of date!
Your time is almost always better spent elsewhere.
“Shipping” is the fastest way to learn.
Following the 80/20 rule (software developers and bloggers can vouch for this), you spend 80% of your time on the last 20%.
So if you can get that sales presentation or new employee onboarding plan to 90% in 2 hours…stop there. Don’t spend the extra 2 (or 10) hours to get it to 100%.
It’s likely you could spend that 2 hours on something more valuable.
This has also happened to me dozens of times:
As soon as a project is done, it’s out of date.
Things move fast and change is the only constant.
Don’t burn yourself out or spend unnecessary time on a resource or project that’s ephemeral.
Lastly, “perfection” is all relative.
You may think something is perfect…until you see the customer’s reaction!
You might as well get the feedback on the 90% version before you spent the extra 3 hours agonizing over the part they didn’t care about!
Yes, there’s always exceptions.
Sales targets! You want to reach those 100% and beyond 😉
Very important meetings. Occasionally — there will be meetings or initiatives that are worth spending extra hours on. But do it intentionally not compulsively.
Product features. Software developers are cringing right now because they think I’m telling them to ship dog shit. Releasing a feature at 95%??? ARE YOU CRAZY?? So, product is an exception (kind of). I know the last 10% of a feature release is the hardest — all the edge cases and details. So maybe you can’t ship at 90% complete without breaking your whole product. BUT — the concept of speed over perfection still holds!
“What if my superpower is doing things perfectly?”
I know a handful of amazing humans who are “maximizers.”
Their vision or attention to detail accelerates something to the next level.
Or, another variation, they are willing to put in 100 hrs/wk week after week to be the best. They will do the extra things that no one else will. They thrive on it.
If this is you, awesome!
You do you.
I see the results and they are fantastic.
I will also ask — just a double check — is there anything that could be done to a slightly lesser degree and get the same impact?
Could you reallocate an hour or two to sleep, another high value project, or working “on” the business instead of “in” the business?
I’m not saying you shouldn’t care.
You should absolutely, definitely still be obsessed with customers and doing high quality work.
I’m not saying to deliver half-ass crap to the market and expect it to be fine.
There’s a ginormous difference between 95% effort (impressive) and 60% effort (uninspiring).
You can care deeply and not be perfect.
Just look at every parent on the planet! 😂🥴🙃
Time is a finite resource and perfection is the enemy of time (and startups)!
Regularly audit how you’re using it and cull or tweak whatever is not valuable.
Speed is one of the competitive advantages you have. Leverage it to the max!
What things do you try to do perfectly or to full completion? When is it worth it? Do you agree that startups should avoid perfection?