Seedcore

In startup culture, “ship fast” has taken on the glow of a commandment. Founders are told to launch quickly, collect feedback, and pivot often. The story sounds reasonable: technology is cheap, speed creates learning, and imperfect products beat those that never see the light of day. But somewhere along the way, the principle has been distorted. Shipping fast has become shorthand for shipping junk—and that’s not strategy, it’s self-sabotage.

The reality is simple: in most cases, nobody is lining up to use your half-baked MVP. Outside of small tech circles, the average person won’t bother with a clumsy tool or broken interface. They won’t pay for it, won’t stick with it, and they’re right not to. A rushed product doesn’t test your idea, it tests whether people are willing to overlook flaws. And when they don’t, founders misinterpret the silence as proof their idea is worthless, abandon it, and rush off to the next one. This cycle has created a graveyard of projects that might have mattered had they been given the patience and conviction to grow.

There are contexts where speed works. Certain SaaS companies thrive on quick cycles because their users demand constant updates and will tolerate rough edges. But these are exceptions. For most ventures, building something that lasts requires the opposite—long periods of focus, commitment, and refusal to cut corners. Starting a company is hard. Unless you are unusually talented or uniquely lucky, your only path is to will an idea into existence by sustained, obsessive effort. Shipping fast encourages the exact opposite mindset: a quick release, fleeting attention, and an easy exit when traction doesn’t arrive overnight.

The result is what might be called disposable innovation. Products are built not to endure, but to validate or invalidate a hunch. That mindset shows in the output. Interfaces that feel confusing. Architectures that collapse under real use. Features that treat symptoms rather than solving meaningful problems. Users sense this transience. They can tell when something was thrown together for the sake of speed, and they protect their time by ignoring it.

The truth is, people don’t care about your launch. They care about whether the product actually works for them. A “minimum viable product” must still be viable. It should deliver genuine value, even if the scope is small. Too often the minimum gets emphasized while the viable is forgotten. If you can’t clear the basic bar of quality, usability, and reliability, you aren’t testing demand—you’re wasting attention.

The founders who succeed are the ones who treat shipping not as an endpoint but as the beginning of the real work. They refine relentlessly, listen carefully, and improve steadily until their product is undeniable. They don’t confuse activity with progress. They understand that a strong product requires persistence after the fanfare of launch has faded.

The cult of speed offers easy validation: the thrill of launching, the applause of peers, the illusion of momentum. But this comfort is deceptive. Most great products are not born from rushing, but from long, sometimes painful cycles of refinement. They require belief strong enough to withstand months or years of slow progress. They require caring deeply enough to get it right.

Stop shipping fast. Ship with conviction. Build something worth standing behind, then stand behind it long enough for the world to notice. In an environment cluttered with disposable ideas, quality itself becomes the sharpest competitive edge.

-Crane