[JumpCrisscross]

> not the "we ran out of money" fan, the "our product literally cannot scale and we have no idea why" fan

There may be sampling bias at play here. For every start-up struggling to scale I’ve seen twenty who architected a solution for a billion users before shipping (or getting paid for) anything. They are the ones who hit the “we ran out of money” fan.

Waiting until your code is broken is bad. I’d argue it’s worse to waste two weeks architecting a feature for 10,000 users before you even have 100.

[Aurornis]

There is either some sampling bias or some creative reinterpretation of history.

It’s rare that a startup acquires users so fast that their codebase becomes the bottleneck

Even if this does happen, it unlocks an easy path to investor money and you can spend your way into expensive engineers who will unlock the problem quickly for you.

[JumpCrisscross]

> creative reinterpretation of history

Mis-labelling growing pains as failure would be one of them.

[stingraycharles]

In similar vein: a lot of startups fail because they raise too much money too early, have unrealistic expectations, while instead they should have raised less against a lower valuation but have investors with realistic expectations.

[JumpCrisscross]

> a lot of startups fail because they raise too much money too early

Source? The eager overfundraisers tend to be either remarkable successful or remarkably not. The only constant being remarkability.

[rahimnathwani]

3NF and microservices FTW.

[siva7]

I fell into this trap often enough even though i knew this anti-pattern. Doing a startup, you have to resist writing code like you would as a proud engineer. If the code is quick and dirty, you're doing it right.

[JumpCrisscross]

> this trap

It’s a tough lesson every entrepreneur must learn.

And lest a non-technical type think they’re safe, it also manifests in perfectionism around document formatting, logos, product names, incorporation documents, strategic orthodoxy, et cetera.

[arresin]

How do I break out of this mindset????

[JumpCrisscross]

> How do I break out of this mindset?

To the extent there is a single mindset, it’s in execution orientation more than the various deficiencies that interrupt it.

That said, the most common forms are procrastination and perfectionism. The former results in mis-prioritization, e.g. fucking with the font in your incorporation docs instead of making sales calls. The latter in task obsession, e.g. fucking with the wording in a sales message.

My demon was the former, so I can speak to it directly: pick up hobbies that force you to prioritize on the fly. For me, that’s been backcountry skiing, diving and flying. Except, of course, those are hobbies I picked up after my startup. The real answer is to find a co-founder (and/or team) who balances your patience setting.

[arresin]

Yes I really need someone to say “you’re still saving that yak? What the hell are you doing, I’ve lined up x customers already”. Like a non-technical partner who is good at sales and promotion. Absolutely no idea how to meet someone like that though.

[disgruntledphd2]

> Absolutely no idea how to meet someone like that though.

The traditional way is to work with your sales team and pay attention to them in your previous roles.

[j45]

Dirty is technical debt.

Quick and flexible often has a more favourable vector.

There's no such thing as perfectly engineered code. It has a shelf life and operating capacity just like one category of vehicle for another.