Getting in the reps

It's easy to theorize about ideas. Creatives love to daydream and imagine the perfect product, appreciated by the masses, and solving all the world's problems.

I've been a mix between product designer, product manager, and frontend developer for a long time. That's meant being involved in decision making, managing products, building them, and trying to get things shipped and off the ground.

But through most of that I was working with others, taking their ideas and realizing them in the best way I could. Even the startup I co-founded years ago was a melding of ideas between a handful of us.

Taking ownership of an idea, with the responsibility of success or failure on your own shoulders, is a whole new level of challenge—and one I'm excited about.

My friend and I have been testing something the last few months.¹

We've been creating apps.

We shipped our first idea recently, and are in the messy middle of getting our second idea out the door.

The first app was an incredible learning experience.

Both of us have been involved with building apps of all sorts, so working on an iPhone app was not something unusual—but making the decisions, trying to figure out which parts should ship and what should hold off, is new territory.

And frankly, we've found it to be a bit addicting.

On the first app I took on the primary ownership of thinking through the product decisions. That was partially because I had been playing with it on the side a bit first, and the concept had been in my head quite a bit.

The new idea has been almost all on Nathan to think through, make decisions, and try to figure out the technical underpinnings.²

Something that we've appreciated in this partnership is the ability to have another person to lean on and wrestle through things together. There are times where I've had a bit more energy on a given evening, and I'll push through an idea, then reach out for feedback. At other times I don't have any bandwidth, but maybe he's got just enough to get up early or stay up late and test it out.

So, with our new idea, we're constantly having to decide what should fit into the initial version, what should be delayed or held off forever, and what decisions now will have longterm impact later.

The big thing we've decided is that we just need to get in the reps with these ideas.

We need to build, test, ship, and learn.

It's important to move forward on ideas that are well enough baked, but push them out to the market and see what we can learn.

I'm not interested in spending years kicking a concept around in my head without ever seeing if it truly solves problems for people. I'd love to spend a few months getting something in shape, sharing it, and seeing what happens next.

Our goal is to not be too precious about any one idea, but keep learning as we push forward, growing, and building things along the way.

What's been even more interesting in all this is the effect it's having on how I think about being a product designer.

I've been doing this for a while now, and it feels like something is shifting in my brain³. When you're building something on your own, or with one other person, the buck just has to stop with you.

That mindset is an interesting one, and it can't help but bleed into other areas of life.

Now, with all that I've been thinking about with imposter syndrome, I'm keenly aware of the fact I really don't know what I'm doing—and that's just fine. Nathan and I are winging it, figuring it out along the way, and stumbling through it. And that's a lot of fun. What I don't want to lose sight of is the fact that most people are doing that, and that's ok. What I hope to do is shed light on that more broadly for others. We don't really know what's happening, but we're trying our best.

And here's to hoping that the app idea we're testing is useful enough that others want to try it out.

1. This has been very much part-time. We both have full-time jobs, and these extra ideas we're tinkering with are what we can do outside of work and family time. That often means not quite having enough time to really push the ideas forward, but it's a lot of fun making decisions and trying to prioritize with an extremely limited resource.
2. The second app we're working on is a business SaaS app, so it's less consumer facing and more solving what we hope will be a business need for a specific type of customer.
3. At 38 years old I'm so happy that my mind hasn't gotten too plastic to be willing to change. May that continue forever.