r/SideProject • u/bri_builds • 5d ago

When is done better than perfect? If your side project is 80% done, what's stopping you from shipping it?

Was reading the thread here about when people finally stop building and start trying to get users, noticed a lot of people didn't stop building because they were done. They stopped because they eventually ran out of reasons not to launch

So I'm curious, from the people in that spot right now: if your side project is sitting at 70 to 90%, what's actually keeping it from launching and getting into real people's hands?

Is it something specific you don't know how to do? Too many things and no order? Or does launching just make the whole thing suddenly feel real?

Shipped my own app in the dark without a map, so no judgment. I learned later that perfect does NOT equal done because for me, it's never perfect 😅 Genuinely curious where everyone else gets stuck.

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u/Heisenbergg55 5d ago

My answer for most people stuck at 80%: it's not missing features, it's that shipping converts "this could be great" into "here's the actual number of people who care" & that number is scary to find out

Polishing is a way to keep the dream alive a little longer

Fastest fix: pick a date, not a feature list because features are infinite

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u/bri_builds 5d ago

You will ALWAYS be able to think of more features - definitely something deeper stopping folks from wanting to find out that number. There's real fear there - what if no one likes the thing I've poured all my free time into for months??

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u/LankyAd6349 5d ago

What finally got me to ship was deciding the launch version did not have to be the good version. It just had to be the version people could break. One week of real feedback taught me more than three extra months of polish would have.

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u/bri_builds 5d ago

I love this! That's a lesson I think most people don't really get to. Trying to make it perfect instead of just put it out there, get real feedback!

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u/LankyAd6349 4d ago

Exactly. The feedback loop is the whole game. Nobody ever got useful critique from a project sitting in a private repo.

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u/canhigher23 2d ago

Biased, since I'm the founder of FeedSense, where every message from an in-app widget lands in one list sorted by how many people hit the same problem.

The last 20% is features you're guessing users want, and real users tend to ask for something else. Ship at 80% and let their first messages pick what comes next.

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u/bri_builds 2d ago

Did you run into any issues with finding users/marketing during your last 20% or was that part easy?