The first paying customer
Line by line your product begins to take shape. Bleary eyed and tired you push on, willing your brain to solve just one more piece of the puzzle before you call it a night.
You’re excited. You’re creating something. The thought that someone, somewhere is going to use it soon pushes you forward. You think “100 paying customers, that’s it, that’s all it would take for me to consider this a success.”
The building phase is full of excitement, full of optimism. You’ve been through it before. You know it’s silly to be so excited, to imagine the success of your product long before it has launched. The slog of building a user base is hard. You know it’s harder than what you’re doing as you spot your bug, bang out that last line of code and close your laptop.
It’s the big day. You launch. You know it’s not really a big day. Your product is niche. You created it for yourself and a couple of...