I don't like much the phrasing "I give up". How about "I had fun, learned while enjoying it, and now move on to my next unfinished project". Great article though !
Worst case you’ve learned something new or had fun.
I am yet to regret a single instance when I regretted sharing unfinished, scrappy work:
https://untested.sonnet.io/Share+your+unfinished%2C+scrappy+...
One approach I really liked was the 2/2/2 rule:
2 hours for a poc → does this even make sense?
2 days for a prototype to share with friends
2 weeks to build something useful (paid if your goal is to charge for it)
You can leave the process at any stage. Each stage teaches you something new.
I had a really compelling but unproven idea once, for a gap in the market for a library. I made an absurdly ruthlessly minimal prototype in 2 hours; then spent 1 long day (9 hours) making a website. My rule was if no one appreciated it in 10 days, I'd forget it. Someone did, and it ended up making me ramen-FU-money.
Can relate. I think the problematic word is "complete"; it's a kind of perfect. Initially aim at incomplete/minimal, then build.
> Our philosophy is to find the fun first and do a lot of prototyping and a lot of iterating very early on. There are probably more projects that I've worked on that haven't turned into final games than have.
> We have ideas. We have prototypes. We spend a lot of time trying out ideas. Probably two-thirds of them don’t end up going anywhere, but experimenting with those kinds of things is fun.
To answer the OP question, I can't find the interview I was looking for now, but I remember that he said that he stops working on a prototype when he realizes that he's learned enough from it.
What’s described here is a lot further along than I normally take a project.
There is always a more interesting project to make that has no potential of being “successful” than the most interesting idea among potentially successful projects.
I think for some people the entrepreneurial angle itself is enough to make a project attractive. But I never quite understood it.
Someday maybe, but if not, that's fine anyway because I learned something and had some fun.
I have to conclude that most people on HN talking about commercializing are doing purely software projects.
My projects very often include hardware. Commercializing hardware+software projects is hard... orders of magnitude harder than just software. That's probably a factor in why the idea of making money from wiring/soldering/dremeling/hacking things is so far from the forefront of my mind.
As for what's attractive... novelty and usability/street cred do seem to be my subconcious goals. "Street cred" or even just aspiring to have people use a software tool is certainly a form of non-profitable entrepreneurship.
You are allowed to do things just for fun.
I think it is a common dream of escaping 9-5 worklife. I find myself trapped in that quite often, trading fun for possibility of financial independence.
If you're not running into situations where you have to put away a project as unfinished then it might mean that you're not pushing yourself to and beyond your capabilities (which, depending on your goals, can be totally fine). And just because something ends up unfinished, doesn't mean that it might not be able to come back later in a different form.
I think lots of us would be better off if we redefined "finish" to basically mean "done", which you can define however you want :)
I will say there is a certain charm to being ignorant that I've seen bring people success (including myself). I've attempted ambitious SEO projects when I was less experienced and succeeded, and looking back in hindsight they were pretty crazy given the success odds.
Never tell me the odds.
I have many unfinished projects.
The goal was not to build a thing - it usually was more an excuse to learn.
Although sometimes it was to build a thing. I once wrote a podcast downloader in powershell because all the ones out there sucked.
Best time of my life.
Also sometimes wrote (finished) software for companies as a freelancer.
Then I finished high-school and started uni where my startup was founded with a friend. I had a successful exit lately.
For me, due to life circumstances of severe chronic pain, until relatively recently my life and projects were mostly on hold.
To cope with my projects "dying" 10+ years ago from no longer being able to work on them, aside from the grief of going through my entrepreneurial baby "dying" - the main project I was working on and putting all of my effort on, and was going well - I began to tell myself that things were simply on hold, on the backburner, and I will revisit them again in the future.
My ideas and understanding and strategy since evolved, and so even though I wasn't actively working on projects - they and myself were still evolving.
https://joeldare.com/how-to-lose-money-with-25-years-of-fail...