YC’s Essential Startup Advice
&gt; launching a mediocre product as soon as possible, and then talking to customers and iterating, is much better than waiting to build the “perfect” product.<p>Yes, yes and yes. But this is so easy said but still a struggle and need to be put into perspective. Let&#x27;s say we do a super simple business, eg a resume writing service on scale (just for the sake of having a simple example). To be ready to reach out to first customers we need to...<p>- Setup a landing page, takes ten minutes with Squarespace but to get all the copy and visuals right or least good enough for some first testing, min one day, rather three to five<p>- Setup and prefill all social media channels, should take half a day incl getting the first 25 likes in order to save the name<p>- Create the first ads and iterate to some ads which actually convert at good CTRs&#x2F;CPCs take multiple days because you need to let a campaign run at least for one day; so lets assume another five days<p>So just to test this stupid-simple agency business properly we need already two weeks.<p>Now imagine, you do something a bit more sophisticated, an actual app&#x2F;SaaS&#x2F;game&#x2F;bot&#x2F;whatever, you still need minimum two weeks for the &#x27;Marketing&#x27; stuff before plus the time for the actual app. And being mediocre doesn&#x27;t work in highly competitive markets.<p>So, if you are able to (1) build a first testable thing in 2-4 weeks you are very good. And you are even better if (2) you have the power and positivity to do 12 tests per year because you need more than one shot.