Don’t Wait for Perfect – Start With Useful
Uncharted But Worth It: Building Bold Ideas in Scrappy Ways
Don’t Wait for Perfect – Start With Useful
So many founders wait until it’s shiny before they ship. This blog breaks down why 'useful now' beats 'perfect later'—and how to build trust (and traction) while you're still iterating.
There’s a particular temptation in entrepreneurship that catches even the best of us. It’s the urge to keep polishing, tweaking, and re-shaping until what you’re building feels perfect. But what is perfect? And I think perfect probably feels different to each of us. Plus, perfect has a habit of never showing up. And while you’re chasing it, momentum slips through your fingers.
I’ve been there, sitting on something that works, but isn’t quite what I had in my head. The font spacing is off, the flow could be smoother, the design isn’t fully where I want it yet. It feels like putting something “unfinished” into the world would somehow show weakness...but "useful now" is always better than "perfect later". As long as it's useful though. If it's not useful, keep hacking at it, lol.
The people you’re building for probably don’t need pristine edges either. They need solutions. They need progress. They need to feel that someone out there is paying attention to the things slowing them down. And even if your version one is a little rough around the edges, if it makes their day easier, they’ll be grateful you shipped it.
The value of useful now is that it creates trust. Not the kind of trust that comes from sleek branding or fancy features, but the deeper kind that says, “we’re listening, we’re learning, and we’re building this with you.” People can forgive a rough start if they see you’re moving, adjusting, and committed to improving. What they can’t forgive is waiting endlessly while nothing changes. I know that's one of the biggest value signals I recognise in a software company, when I see true momentum in their product development. They're finessing, enhancing and evolving older stuff, and shipping new stuff regularly tells me they love what they're doing and are excited to provide solutions.
This is where iteration becomes your greatest ally. Every launch, even the imperfect ones, gives you something to learn from. Every piece of feedback makes the next version sharper. Every early adopter who takes a chance on you gets to feel part of the journey. And that sense of shared ownership that you’re building together, goes further than any polish ever could.
Roamlii was never built in one grand unveiling. It grew piece by piece, through a lot of testing, learning, and yes, launching things that weren’t flawless. We didn’t wait until the system was picture-perfect, because it never would be. Instead, we focused on being useful. On helping small businesses show up, get discovered, and book more easily...even if the early versions weren’t as smooth as the ones you see today. And you know what? That usefulness earned us trust. It showed our partners that we were serious about solving real problems for them, not just impressing them with a shiny interface and a gorgeous website. We've had a few versions of our website and our Discovery Site now, and I don't regret any of them, they were all part of the journey, and they all told the same underlying story, we're here to add value to the tourism industry, with true digital infrastructure, rather than extract from it like all the others.
Of course, this doesn’t mean you can ignore quality. People won’t stick around if your “good enough” doesn’t actually help. But it does mean that a working, useful tool will always beat a beautiful idea sitting unpublished in a folder somewhere. Perfection is a moving target, indeed, but usefulness is a step you can take today.
So if you’re holding back because it isn’t ready, consider what ready actually means. Does it solve a problem for someone? Does it make a task simpler? Does it take a little bit of friction out of their day? If the answer is yes, then it’s ready enough to start!
The funny thing about useful now too is that it has a way of turning into great later. Not because you got everything right the first time, but because you gave yourself the chance to improve in public, to learn, to refine. And by the time you’ve added all those refinements, you’ll have something better than perfect, you’ll have something proven.
So don’t wait. Ship the version that helps. Share the thing that works, even if it’s not quite as sleek as you’d like. Trust that usefulness is the best first step, and let the rest come through successive iterations. Your future customers will thank you for solving their problems today, not someday.
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Let’s build things that matter, and ship them before they're perfect. Because perfect may never arrive, but useful will always move us forward. Mic drop.
#GetRoaming and let’s shape a tourism economy built on progress, trust, and solutions that last.
Yours in tourism, innovation and startups,
Founder & CEO
Roamlii
