I love the balance here, but where I do want to push is “you’re going to get pushed into a service-based model.” Yes, you may need a service model to generate the cashflow to put R&D and marketing into your thing, but my experience has been that the service arm of a business can often drive the product-based arm of the business. By working with people, you figure out what they actually need, which either might be your world-changing idea or could be baked into the packaging and/or design of your world-changing idea.

I’m not saying that the service arm isn’t going to limit the amount of time you have to develop you’re thing, because that’s obviously true. But, if the people you’re serving are a distraction, there’s a good chance that the people you’re going to sell your thing to will be a distraction, too. There’s a fine line between the process of working with people being a distraction and the people themselves being a distraction, and when you’re frustrated about the lack of development on something, it’s easier to point outward than inward.

The upshot of it taking more time is that it can take more time. Rather than shipping a shoddy alpha, you can ship a better one because you’re not in a rush to hit the market.

Aside: the irony here is that we spent so much of our time together doing teenage bullsh*t when we could have been building something awesome. Alas that you were way ahead of me on that front.