Shipping slow

When is shipping slow an unfair advantage?

I got only 1h a day to build now. Sometimes less!

But I still need to ship new things because none of my products have escape velocity yet. I need to try small bets, small MVPs but at 1h per day even small is super slow.

So I need to be more selective, or just smart with where I spend my time, discerning with the kind of ideas I even try.

Shipping slow(er) makes sense when you found product-market fit, and the feature set is stable. Taking time to know customer needs before shipping is great too. Some folks say, it’s not about speed, it’s about shipping the right things. But that’s a silly objection. We all want to ship the right things, whether fast or slow. We all ship based on the assumption it’s the right thing. That’s not my real question anyway. My question is more upstream, even before finding the right market or product, before product-market fit.

If you were somehow forced by circumstances to ship slow on new ideas… how would you turn that into an advantage than a handicap?

How can I turn shipping slow from fragile to an antifragile thing?

Maybe I can find markets or products where shipping slow actually becomes advantageous than a handicap (so that rules out something like AI wrappers).

But what are these markets/products?

Apple seems to do this pretty well. They are often slow to ship on trending features but do it well when they do ship. Observing what works and what doesn’t, seeing what’s proven and solved before releasing your own spin seems to be benefit the slow.

Last mover can be advantageous that way.

And once you’re clear what you’re doing, what you need to do, you’re less easily distracted or swayed by new shiny objects or just blindly follow the “ship fast” advice, because you’re more just doing your own thing, in your own lane, flourishing.

And as long as you don’t stop, slow still gets you to your destination too.

So… no clear answers, just general heuristics to go with:

• Proven, validated product
• Multiple profitable competitors
• Sorta evergreen problem
• Customer paying and staying
• Not bleeding edge or trending industry (like AI)
• Not novel or unique product where no one had tried before
• No urgency from customers whether you ship features fast or slow

Anything else?