Bugs vs. product-market fit: why even startups need to build high quality products

When early-stage startups are trying to find product-market fit, they often receive advice to ship fast and ship messy because users will know the product has market fit when they're willing to use it despite its bugs. However, this approach obscures clarity, making it difficult for founders to distinguish between a product problem and quality issues. Reid Hoffman's "ship fast" mantra is still relevant, but it should be followed by a focus on fixing high-quality software, rather than tolerating bugs. Founders need to prioritize quality to create momentum, unlock learning, and make important decisions about the product direction. By keeping scope small, involving the entire team in testing and dogfooding, setting up lightweight processes and tools, and hiring a QA tester early, startups can ship high-quality software and avoid obscurity around product-market fit.