I am an ‘expert’ on the Virgin Media’s ‘Pioneers’ website where they’ve asked me to talk about productivity and how to get things done when starting a business. One of the common pieces of advice given by a lot of entrepreneurs is to launch early and use this early phase to test out customer reaction in a ‘real’ setting rather than just relying on market research. This is something we did with Think Productive UK and that I wholeheartedly recommend.
As a result of launching early, there will be the occasional piece of criticism that things aren’t finished or perfect, you’ll need to adapt quickly to ‘real’ feedback (although that should ALWAYS be the case, even for the most established business) and you’ll need to be comfortable enough in your own skin knowing you’ll probably look back in a years’ time and feel embarrassed about your earliest logo or website.
But on the plus side, you’ll be gaining such a lot of valuable customer feedback, you’ll be challenging yourself with some ridiculous deadlines that will push you further forward and hey, you might even get to the making some cash stage that bit sooner too.
Go for it!