For Sam it was more of a gut feel than a metrics or user-feedback call. Having learned from his previous experience, he knew he wanted to ship quickly and iterate rather than wait for a perfectly polished product — a hard shift for a self-described perfectionist.
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His test was simple: figure out the one single core thing you're trying to prove. For Butter that was — can someone create and post a plan, have it shown to the relevant people, and get guests to join the plan? Once the app did that, he decided to get it to market, see what the sentiment was and how it performed, and iterate from there. His advice to founders who get fixated on a perfect product: you can sink a lot of money and time into it, so figure out that one core thing, ship that, and iterate from there.