Startup Milestones

There are four basic milestones every software startup must go through during their lifespan:

(1) That would be a good problem to have

At this stage potential customers have begun to evaluate your products and there is a trace of word-of-mouth buzz outside the office but generally people are kicking the tires and little to zero revenue is coming in. It would be a nice problem to have customers with support issues.

(2) That is a nice problem to have

Here the buzz has begun to turn into real sales, the support forums are heating up, and the early-adopting customers are struggling to get deployed. The best products are forged in customer hell. Paying customers clamoring for support... that's a nice problem to have.

(3) That's a crappy problem to have

At this point the buzz has subsided and there are a gaggle of customers, some of which are very unhappy. Real product development has been squeezed out in lieu of customer hand-holding, bug fixing and reworking those problematic parts of the product that were commented with:

// TODO: fix this

We've got to fix these problems customers are continually running into or we'll never get back to developing features! What a crappy problem to have.

(4) That's not my problem

Now the buck starts getting passed, potential M&A activity is stirring, and more and more new faces are showing up around the office. You've polished off your resume (CV for you bangers & mash types) and started adding contacts to your LinkedIn account. You start to wonder if you like doing software development after all. Your boss is complaining that the TPS report you submitted doesn't have the correct cover page. That's not my problem.

(5) Big profits