I think a lot about what it means to build a successful company. One of the many lessons I have learned is that you should push quick and push often.
Every industry is different but in technology, the marketplace is rapidly evolving. Customers needs are changing and the underlying technologies of the things you are building as a company are changing even faster.
Treating new features like a lab experiment is not the right path forward. With LEO, we went through a phase where we had all sorts of Alpha and Beta and Labs UIs. We had multiple testing groups and we would sit on new features for months.
It created a mess of a situation. We would be sitting on features for way too long - polishing them for way too long, taking in feedback from a small core set of users, making the average user wait for things.
Ultimately, it slowed down our ability to ship. We want to ship new tech and new features as fast as possible. Get them to market and then evolve them as we go.
Labs vs. Production
Having features in production gives you an entirely different outlook on them. You get real-time feedback from people who actually use and need your product. I have learned this lesson over the years while building LEO and the result is what you see today: when the team and I build something, our #1 priority is to get it to production as FAST as possible.
Getting it to production means getting you - the real person who uses it - to get your hands on it and give us #feedback.
Feedback Loops and Iteration
I have learned that once you ship something to production, the real work actually begins.
Now you need to listen to feedback and refine what you've built for the real-world. This is actually the hardest part. Not only do you need to know what TO DO but you need to know what NOT to do. Customer feedback is vital but it must be sifted and decoded.
Your customer isn't always going to tell you exactly what they want. They may just say something doesn't look right or feel right. It's not their job to articulate it to you better, it is your job to listen better and see through their eyes.
I often ask the LEO community for feedback and ask to include screenshots and as much of a description as possible. From there, I am able to (literally) see it through your eyes. Another thing I've learned is about nuance.
Nuance in Building
Nuance is something that you cannot rush, predict nor control. There is so much nuance to everything - especially software.
Consider this: we have a global userbase of people on all sorts of devices. Android, IOS, desktop, tablet, multi-monitors, old devices and new devices... all sorts of screen sizes.
That's just on the device front. Now layer in language barriers, technological capability barriers and many many more.
These nuances in building are extremely difficult - I'd say impossible - to control in a lab environment.
The solution? Ship to production and iterate.
Example
I am thinking about this today as we're about to launch a new feature for https://leodex.io. This new feature allows users to use what we're calling a "Swap Account" to make swapping faster and easier. It literally allows you to swap with ANY wallet and simply scan a QR code.
We've made the swapping process as easy as the sending process is for crypto. If you can send crypto, then you can swap it with this new feature.
This being said, we need to get this thing to production. We've tested it six ways from Sunday but until REAL people start using it, we won't see how it is actually utilized.
I personally believe that this will be one of the most important features (Swap Accounts) that we've ever built.
While building this, I have developed an entire Roadmap for Swap Accounts. I believe that we'll change the industry for Cross-Chain Swaps with this feature.
Which leads me to my final point about shipping early and often:
You DON'T KNOW.
In my mind, this is an incredibly valuable feature that makes swapping super easy. I feel that it will lead to millions of dollars in volume for LeoDex as ZEC users (we're starting with ZEC and adding other assets as we go) realize that they can swap with a seamless User Experience on a UI that is as easy as sending ZEC.
No other cross-chain interface currently supports Zcash wallets outside of Keystore. In production, we were the first interface to support ZEC swaps on Maya using a Keystore.
Now we will be the first and only interface to support ZEC swaps using ANY Zcash-compatible wallet. This includes Shielded ZEC (which nobody else is able to support either).
To me, this innovation and ease of use is extremely valuable and seems like it would be valuable to Zcash users.
But again, until you ship you truly don't know shit.