Lately, my work has once again shown me how important it is to finish things. Preferably as soon as possible. You can have lots of good ideas, think about them, and keep improving them, but until you put them in front of people, you still do not really know whether anyone wants them.
My business partner Štěpán and I are currently building a new app called UpTier, which I have already written about on the blog. During development, we changed quite a lot, rebuilt some things from the ground up, and also began approaching the work itself differently. When I see today what a difference this has made to our productivity, I am honestly thrilled.
And that is exactly why I am writing this article. Because in my opinion, there are now an incredible number of ways to create something, speed things up, or launch your own project. It would be a shame to spend another year merely wondering whether to go for it.
I built a prototype. Then we rebuilt part of the app
At the beginning, I built a working prototype based on my own vision. I knew what I wanted from the app, what features it should have, and how I would use it myself. But when Štěpán and I subsequently began going through it together, we agreed that some things needed to go in a slightly different direction.
I do not want to go into detail right now, but the main problem was fairly simple. Some features made sense to people who work in SEO and know what they are doing. But they were not as clear to complete beginners. And we want the app to be usable even by people who are unfamiliar with this field.
I had not fully thought that through during the initial development. When you have worked in a field for a long time, it is easy to start taking certain things for granted. But someone opening the app for the first time does not have all the context in their head that you do. They need to understand what to do and how it will benefit them.
So we rebuilt part of the app, prototyped some things again, and looked for a simpler way to offer them to users. And yes, we got stuck overthinking some things again. Looking back, I can see that we made certain things unnecessarily complicated.
But I am genuinely happy with the result. We managed to move the app forward significantly, and we still have plenty of plans for it in the future. At the same time, it reminded me how useful it is to have something functional as soon as possible that you can discuss in concrete terms. As long as everything exists only in your head, many similar problems will not even occur to you.
Waiting two or three months for a single feature was too long
In addition to the new app, we also addressed productivity issues with our Editee.com. Some things took far too long to develop for our liking, and getting them over the finish line was difficult. Sometimes we waited two or three months for a single feature.
And yet we had top-notch programmers. Nevertheless, development dragged on, and we felt that we needed to change the way we worked. In an environment where technology is advancing so quickly, two or three months is a long time.
Of course, I understand that development is not always easy. AI also makes mistakes, its output needs to be checked, and you need to understand what you are creating. A working demo alone does not mean that everything is ready for real users.
But even with all that, in my experience AI can speed up development in an incredible way. When I see what we can accomplish today, I find it hard to accept that we should continue working at the same pace as before.
That is why we began changing our processes, the way we collaborate, and how we use the tools available to us.
Štěpán and I call each other every day and give each other a bit of a kick in the pants
One of the changes is having regular daily calls with Štěpán. We keep each other updated on what has moved forward, what still needs to be resolved, and what to tackle next. This gives us a better overview, and we give each other a bit of a kick in the pants so that things do not remain unnecessarily unfinished.
It may sound ordinary, but things like this can make a big difference. When you revisit tasks together every day, it is much easier to stay focused on what actually needs to be completed.
We have also integrated AI much more deeply into our work, including multi-agent systems. Put simply, this means using multiple AI agents among which the work can be divided. We have also created our own orchestration systems, meaning a way to coordinate and connect their activities.
The combination of these changes has increased our productivity tremendously. Today, as I write this article, I am especially excited about it. When I look at the amount of work I have managed to do today, I would go so far as to say that I accomplished more than a team of programmers would in a month.
It is on days like these that I realize what a huge change this is. How many things you can suddenly automate, simplify, and bring to completion. And how much time that leaves you for other ideas.
Why work expands so easily
Interestingly, people described a similar problem long before today’s technologies emerged. Back in 1955, Cyril Northcote Parkinson wrote a satirical essay for The Economist that gave rise to the well-known Parkinson’s Law. Its central idea can be summarized by saying that work tends to take up all the time allocated to it. He illustrated this with the simple task of mailing a postcard. An activity that a busy person can complete in a few minutes can take up a substantial part of someone else’s day: they look for a postcard, choose the wording, find the address, and think about when to go to the post office. More about Parkinson’s Law.
When developing an app, I think it is easy to fall into something similar. If you allow unlimited time for the first version, there will always be another feature, another adjustment, and another idea that would be good to add. And the launch date slowly drifts further away.
That is why it makes sense to me to define as early as possible exactly what the first version should do and when we want to complete it. We can note down other ideas and return to them later. Otherwise, we risk turning a relatively simple project into something we will still be developing next year.
Two years of development and eight million spent on something nobody wants
I recently saw a video on TikTok in which an entrepreneur said he had invested approximately eight million in software development. After two or three years, he then discovered, according to him, that nobody was interested in it.
This is exactly the scenario I want to avoid. You invest time, energy, and money in something for a long time, but only at the end do you test the fundamental question of whether anyone actually wants it. In the meantime, the market may change, a competitor may emerge, or a technology may arrive that significantly weakens the original idea.
That is why, in my view, it makes much more sense to create a prototype as quickly as possible and then an MVP, meaning a minimum viable product. One that allows you to test the basic assumption: that you are solving a problem people genuinely care about.
This approach did not originate with AI either. It was significantly popularized by Eric Ries in his book The Lean Startup, published in 2011. Part of this methodology is the build-measure-learn process: prepare the simplest possible test of an idea, monitor customer reactions, and use the findings to decide what direction to take next. Lean Startup principles.
What seems especially important to me is the last part. The first version teaches you something. You find out whether people understand what you are offering, whether it helps them, and whether they are willing to pay for it. Based on that, you can continue, change direction, or abandon some plans altogether.
Today, we have tools that allow us to prepare many similar tests much more quickly. That makes it even less sensible to me to shut ourselves away for several years to develop something and hope that, in the end, everyone will understand what a great thing we have created.
Customers will tell you more than another month of thinking
We receive ongoing feedback on our products. People tell us what they like, what bothers them, what they are missing, or what they do not understand. And we continue adjusting the apps accordingly.
In my opinion, that is the huge advantage of reaching the point where people are already using the product. You can ask specific people and observe their real experience. You will often find that users barely care about something that seemed essential to you. Conversely, they may be held back by something you did not pay enough attention to during development.
Reworking our new app for beginners has taught me a valuable lesson in this regard. When I design it based solely on my own perspective, it is easy to overlook something that will matter to its future users. The sooner we discover such things, the sooner we can improve them.
That is why I would not wait unnecessarily before releasing the first usable version. Let people try it, acquire your first customers, ask them for their opinions, and continue developing as you go. Even discovering that you were wrong about something can save you a great deal of additional work.
When I see what is possible today, I cannot imagine where we will be in a year
I am genuinely excited about AI and technology in general right now. When I see everything that is already possible, and how work can be connected and automated, it is hard to imagine where we will be in another year. That is how fast it all seems to me.
I am also looking forward to seeing what this development will bring to other fields, from research and medicine to completely ordinary activities. The potential seems enormous to me, and I am honestly glad that we get to be part of it.
That makes it even harder for me to understand when someone runs an online business, creates content, develops software, or otherwise operates in the online world while completely ignoring AI. In my view, they are creating an unnecessary competitive disadvantage for themselves. If you do not want to learn how to work with it, you are depriving yourself of opportunities that can already make your work significantly easier today.
I do not want to repeat all the familiar marketing slogans here about who will take whose job. My own experience of what we can do and how quickly we can do it is enough for me.
By the way, some of those slogans make me smile. I now see some phrases that Štěpán used in our ads appearing in other companies’ ads as well. Sometimes the similarity is genuinely amusing. At the same time, I see it as a certain acknowledgment of how good he is at marketing.
For me, however, the most interesting thing is seeing how the use of AI translates into concrete results. In my experience, speed no longer has to mean lower quality in many cases. If you know how to use the tools and check the results, you can move forward significantly faster than before.
There are so many opportunities that we cannot keep up with all our ideas
Štěpán and I have so many ideas for things we want to create or implement that we simply cannot manage to bring them all to life. We see many opportunities that we believe could work and make money. And that is precisely why it is so important to choose what we will focus on and finish things one by one.
Starting ten projects is easy. Every new idea is exciting. But the attention you devote to another new beginning may then be missing from a project that could already be put in front of customers. Completing the first version opens the door to real-world experience, initial revenue, and further decision-making.
I understand that some people barely know how to use a computer and may find entering this world challenging. But if you are at least somewhat comfortable using a computer and are willing to learn, I believe you have incredible opportunities ahead of you today. You can create content, offer services, automate work, build your own projects, and reach people from virtually anywhere.
This freedom is exactly what I enjoy about online business. You can travel, work from different places, and create something used by people you would otherwise never meet.
Sometimes I feel that those dollars really are lying on the ground all around us. We just have to learn how to pick them up: notice an opportunity, learn something, and do the work required to turn an idea into something useful.
So if you have been thinking about something for a long time, choose one specific idea. Define what its first version needs to do and start creating it. Finish it, show it to people, and use their reactions to decide how to proceed.
Get off your butt and go create something. It would be a shame to merely watch all these opportunities pass by while constantly telling yourself why it cannot be done.
Good luck. And let me know in the comments what you have created or what you are currently working on. I am genuinely interested.
