Rerouting the Engineering Mind

The Engineer's Blind Spot

Over the past couple of years, I’ve been seeing the same pattern amongst technical founders.

One engineer spent a year building in isolation without the technical skills to complete an ambitious project. He ended up with a half-broken app nobody wanted and a short timeline to find a job instead.

Another spent two years building in isolation. Now has a few short months to find customers before the money runs out.

Another spent five years, only to launch to crickets and go through a painful grieving process, gain 50 lbs, and ultimately return to a corporate job he desperately wanted to escape.

Same mistake. Three different sentences.

This is due to a common misconception that a high-quality product must be in place before customers can be engaged.

This misconception is what hinders technical founders more than anything else. Especially as the build becomes increasingly complicated. There’s a hesitancy to release something less than perfect due to their fear of being judged.

Instead, Engineers need to be disciplined with their ship dates, talk to at least 10 customers before building anything, and continuously show their products and get feedback at every stage of the process. Bonus points for testing live and guiding users to solve their problems manually first if you haven't yet built the functionality.

The engineers who build great companies aren't the ones who wrote the best code. They're the ones who found out they were wrong fastest and adjusted.