My lessons from building fast

Hey, it’s Sabyr.

All lessons that I learned:

1) Ship fast, build fast, learn fast, fail fast, and iterate fast.

You probably heard all of these words but didn’t apply them. Now it is time. I couldn’t imagine myself here with you, writing my first post on beehiiv and hitting first 1,000 followers on X (formerly Twitter). All I did it under 6 months. By the way, don’t forget that I built 6 apps and made my FIRST DOLLAR ONLINE. It will be another story and let’s focus on building first.

2) Don’t overcomplicate with content and features, make them visible and easy as possible. Sometimes it means copy like I did with my latest product.

It is hard to imagine that you can just copy someone. YEAH, you are true. You will never copy someone work 100%. But you can use him/her homework.
What do I mean ?
I launched myself MVPAgency, saw a real problem that founders have. Due to my engineering experience, and business experience, I am helping other founders with building their MVPs. Analyzed competitors on the same niche, and saw main problems that they solve. Added them to my landing page, improved user flow, and added what others have. If I did it from scratch without analyzing and using others experience, I wouldn’t get any visitors and booking already in first 2 weeks.

3) If you launched MVP with fully functional features, with admin panels, with customer CRM, and with perfect design. You are late.

Not good to hear it, but I know that feeling. I was on the same place like you are. Because in our corporate job we get paid for what built. It doesn’t matter how many visitors you get, how many paid customers, how long is average visit duration, and does it solve really a problem ? Or it is just another project.
What I discovered myself, it is better to do marketing first. Because if you do it before any building, you will understand fully who is your customer and what his needs.

4) 0 sales means failure with this project. Move on. Go ship another thing.

Set a deadline to your project, no more than 2-3 months. Ideally 2-4 weeks. If you didn’t get any money from it. Move on. It won’t worth it if just started. By building more things and trying new spheres, you will get more knowledge, customers, and experience.

5) Keep your promises. Everything that I promised here. I do it on time. It does matter if you play a long game.

Sometimes I like to play a game, post about upcoming project, or idea, or something else on X. To share it in public and there is no way back. Do it the same way, tell your friends, relatives, family or someone else. It will help.

6) Make friends here. Follow them, engage with their content, send them gifts, help them with their bugs, and learn from them.

If you are here only just to make money, you won’t last long. Because you need to make your activity fun and exciting to you. And that’s why you need to make friends, engage with them, and share everything.

7) Niche. Niche. Niche. Don’t over-focus. Focus on a specific niche that you know is good. Get money on that and then improve yourself

Due to our current time, and a lot of quick rich schemas, we want to make money fast. It is good. But it won’t help if you want play a long game. First, try to focus on specific problem, niche, or sphere. More you focus, more you solve it, more chances you get to earn something.

8) Build in public. Do in public. Learn in public. Fail in public. Iterate in public.

Didn’t get a lot of attention to it. Even now I don’t share everything but sometimes it is really helpful. You think something that is not appropriate, good, or ideal. But it is what really people want. They want real people with feelings, failures, and wins.

9) Don’t be someone who you are not. I didn’t make money from my apps. I don’t lie about fake MMR from Stripe or something like that.

If you are here to make money you can like for sure. But if you are like me to play a long game. Don’t even try. One lie, after it comes another lie. And you won’t even see how you lie, lie, lie.

10) Play your game. Don’t run for hype. Someone could make $10k in the first month and leave on the third month because there is money. Someone could make $10k on the second year and work for another 10 years.

It is hard to do. But you should compare yourself only with yourself. If you want to build a new notepad, then build it. If you want to run business, run it. Do only what you want and need. Not what others tell.