Lessons learned

• The basics are boring and invisible, but non-negotiable: docs, stability, performance, observability, polishing.

• Covering the basics requires focused work. Distractions make you forget them.

• Learn to cut noise aggressively. Slack threads, channels, emails, notifications. Less noise equals more focused work. More focused work means the basics actually get done.

• Negative feedback is easy to fixate on. It often points to real pain, so it matters. But positive feedback matters too. Make time to listen to both.

  • If you only focus on negative feedback you steer the ship by pain, not value

• As you grow, the number of unhappy voices grows too.

  • 5% unhappy at 100 users is 5 people.

  • 1% unhappy at 1M users is 10,000 people.

  • Maintain perspective.

• Always ask questions, always start the conversation.

• As an individual, do fewer things, higher quality.

• As a team, make sure you build things in the same direction.

• Don’t speedrun the final product. Build the primitives so the final product becomes a side effect.

• Make it possible for people to build on top of what you build. It takes extra work. It’s always worth it.

• Support is everything. Great support helps users and tells you exactly what to work on next.

• Never copy competitors. Never let them define your goals or your direction.

• Scope creep is real and dangerous. Keep scope closed. Focused scope enables focused work. Focused work is how the basics get done.

• Understand your product’s surface area. Know when a feature adds surface area vs depth. Good features usually add depth.

  • Example:

  • You build feature A. People love it.

  • You build feature B. People don’t.

  • You probably should have made feature A better!

• Work backwards from docs. Write what the best docs would look like, work backwards from there.