Switch before perfect
In 1993, when I was raising investment for one of the first internet companies, there weren’t any firms that specialized in this sort of thing. They were VCs from a different era, looking for the next Fedex or pharma company.
I pitched dozens of them, and the answer was consistent, “get back to us when this is irresistible and then of course we’ll say yes.”
The same thinking is applied to many new products, from vegan burgers to online services. None of them are perfect at first, just as none of the things we’re reliant on today began as perfect.
And yet, some folks went first. Some, like Jerry and Fred, started a VC fund that had record returns because they invested in internet companies that weren’t perfect (yet). And some consumers bought things from the local store when version .5 wasn’t quite ready yet.
If you want to leap forward, you’ll need to ship things before they’re perfect, mostly to people who want to buy them before they are.