I'll never forget the feeling of writing my first book. I was paralyzed. I'd write a chapter, then spend a week rewriting the same three paragraphs, trying to get every single word perfect. I was so afraid of putting something out into the world that wasn't flawless. I was convinced that my credibility was on the line with every sentence.
A wise mentor of mine pulled me aside and said something that changed my whole perspective. He said, "Aref, a good book on a shelf that helps one person is infinitely more valuable than a perfect manuscript locked in your desk drawer that helps no one."
It took me a while to truly understand that lesson, but I see founders making that same mistake every single day. They are so focused on building the "perfect" product, on getting every feature right and every pixel aligned, that they never get around to the most important work: the work of learning. In the hunt for what we call product-market fit, the goal was never perfection; but progress. And more specifically, it's the velocity of your learning that determines if you'll ever find traction.
Leadership is a journey of intentional growth, and so is building a business. The Law of Process teaches us that growth happens daily, not in a day. Waiting for the perfect moment or the perfect product is a violation of that law. The founders who win aren't the ones who get it right the first time, but the ones who get it wrong, and learn, and adapt the fastest.
Here's why a bias for imperfect action is so critical in the early days:
1. You can't learn in a vacuum. You can have the smartest people in a room, whiteboarding for months, but all you have is a collection of guesses. A product is a question you ask the market. A perfect, polished product that you've worked on for a year is just a very expensive, time-consuming question. A simpler, faster version gets you an answer—and that answer is the only thing that has any real value. You have to be willing to get into a conversation with your customers, and you can't do that if you're too afraid to speak.
2. Momentum is fueled by action, not precision. Perfectionism is the enemy of momentum. It creates a culture of hesitation and fear. A team that is shipping, learning, and iterating (even if they have to fix bugs or apologize for missteps) is a team that is alive. They feel the forward motion. A team that is stuck in endless review cycles, waiting for a green light that never comes, grows stagnant. As a leader, your job is to create momentum. The Law of Momentum says that once you get a team moving, it's much easier to keep them moving. The first imperfect step is often the hardest, but most important one.
3. It redefines failure as tuition. I learned long ago to "fail forward." When you're obsessed with perfection, any flaw feels like a final verdict—a failure. But when your goal is learning velocity, every flaw is simply data. Every customer complaint, every feature that no one uses, every marketing message that falls flat isn't a failure of the business; it's tuition you've paid for a critical lesson. And the faster you pay that tuition, the faster you get your education.
So, I want to ask you: What are you holding back right now because it's not quite perfect? Is it a new feature? A marketing campaign? That first cold email to a potential customer?
Here is your challenge: This week, ship it.
Don't ship it to get applause. Ship it to get a response. Ship it to learn something you could not have learned while it was sitting on your desk. That response( good, bad, or indifferent) is the beginning of your real progress.
Because great founders don't start with the perfect product. They start with a powerful desire to learn, and they never, ever let a desire for perfection get in the way of that.