Why perfectionism was my worst enemy as a founder — Building Products [Mischa Sigtermans](https://mischa.sigtermans.me) [ Thoughts ](https://mischa.sigtermans.me/thoughts) [ Books ](https://mischa.sigtermans.me/books) [ About ](https://mischa.sigtermans.me/about) [← Thoughts](https://mischa.sigtermans.me/thoughts) February 20, 2022 · Personal Why perfectionism was my worst enemy ==================================== Perfectionism looked like quality from the outside. From the inside it was missed deadlines, impossible delegation, and a web agency that couldn't scale past one person. From the outside, perfectionism looks like someone who cares. Someone who won't ship until it's right. Someone with high standards. I believed all of that about myself for years, and it cost me more than I can count. At [Pixelstart, the web agency I ran for five years](/thought/why-i-decided-to-sell-my-web-agency), perfectionism was the reason I couldn't hire, couldn't delegate, and couldn't stop working. Every project had to look exactly the way I'd imagined it. Every pixel had to land. Every page load had to feel right in a way I couldn't articulate but could instantly spot when it was wrong. The clients never asked for this level of precision. I demanded it of myself, and then I demanded it of everyone around me, and then I wondered why nobody stayed long enough to learn how I wanted things done. What perfectionism actually costs --------------------------------- The real price of perfectionism isn't slow work. It's the work that never starts. I lost count of how many projects I delayed because the design wasn't right yet. Not functionally broken. Not ugly. Just not at the level I'd decided it needed to be. I'd push back deadlines, rebuild mockups, redo layouts that were already approved by the client, because I'd noticed something at 2 AM that nobody else would ever see. The client was happy. The site worked. But I wasn't done, because my definition of done was a moving target that always stayed one revision ahead of wherever I was. This showed up in three places at Pixelstart that I can name specifically: **Design iterations that prioritised aesthetics over function.** I'd spend days on a homepage hero section while the checkout flow was still broken. The homepage looked beautiful. The client couldn't sell anything through it yet. But the homepage was the part I could see, and the checkout was plumbing, and perfectionism has a bias toward the visible. **Inability to delegate.** I tried hiring developers. I tried freelancers. Every time, the work came back and I redid most of it. Not because it was bad. Because it wasn't mine. The gap between 'good enough' and 'what I would have done' felt enormous to me and invisible to anyone else. I was the bottleneck, and I couldn't see that the bottleneck was the problem because I was too busy being proud of being necessary. **Projects that couldn't start because I was still finishing the last one.** New clients would sign, and their project would sit in a queue while I polished something that was already live. I was perpetually behind, not because I was slow, but because I couldn't stop. The line that broke it ---------------------- After I [sold Pixelstart](/thought/why-i-decided-to-sell-my-web-agency), I started building [Stagent](https://stagent.com), a SaaS platform for booking agencies in the music industry. I [raised funding to grow it](/thought/how-i-secured-funding-for-my-startup), hired the first developer, and set about building the product I'd been thinking about for years. Stagent was where perfectionism met its wall. A SaaS product doesn't get to be perfect before it ships. It ships, and then it gets better, or it dies. There's no client sitting across the table approving a mockup. There are users who need the thing to work today, and they will tell you with their behavior whether it works, and they do not care about your pixel alignment. The moment that changed how I think about this was hearing a line from one of our early beta testers. They didn't care about the design. They didn't notice the spacing I'd agonized over. What they said was closer to: 'Functionality is key. We can make changes as time goes on.' I've kept those words close ever since. They're the simplest possible rebuttal to everything perfectionism tells you. The user doesn't need it to be perfect. The user needs it to work. You can iterate. You can improve. You can redesign later when you know what actually matters. But you can't iterate on something you never shipped. Learning to ship imperfect -------------------------- Stagent forced me to learn a different way of building. I learned to ship imperfect products, trust beta testers, and iterate based on real feedback rather than imagined ideals. The beta testers consistently prioritised functionality over the design details I'd obsessed over. They wanted the invoicing to be correct, the contracts to generate cleanly, the calendar to show the right dates. They didn't care whether the dashboard had the exact gradient I'd been tweaking for a week. That was humbling. It was also freeing. Once I accepted that the user's definition of 'done' was different from mine, and that theirs was the one that mattered, I started shipping faster. Not carelessly. I still cared about quality. But quality shifted from 'does this meet my standard?' to 'does this solve the user's problem?' The first version is never the version that works. The tenth version is close. The twentieth version is the product. You can't get to the twentieth version if you're still perfecting the first. The part I haven't solved ------------------------- I won't pretend I've conquered this. Perfectionism isn't a habit you break. It's a reflex you learn to override, and the override takes effort every time. I still catch myself spending too long on something that doesn't need it. I still feel the pull to redo work that's already good enough. The difference is that now I can name what's happening. When I'm rebuilding a page that already works, I know that's perfectionism. When I'm delaying a launch because of a detail only I would notice, I know that's perfectionism. Knowing doesn't make the impulse go away. It makes the impulse something I can decide to ignore. The framework I use now is simple. Will the user notice? If yes, fix it. If no, ship it. If I'm not sure, ship it and see whether anybody mentions it. Almost nobody ever does. What I'd tell another perfectionist founder ------------------------------------------- Perfectionism will dress itself up as the thing that makes you good. It will tell you that your standards are why your clients trust you, why your work stands out, why you're different from everyone else who ships mediocre work. And some of that is true. The problem is that perfectionism doesn't know when to stop. It will burn through your deadlines, your team, your sleep, and your enthusiasm for the work, and it will do all of this while convincing you that the problem is everyone else's standards, not yours. The fix isn't lowering your standards. It's redirecting them. Care about whether the thing works. Care about whether the user's problem is solved. Care about whether you shipped this week. Stop caring about whether the hover state on a button is the exact shade of blue you imagined at 1 AM. Functionality is key. You can make changes as time goes on. I keep saying it because I keep needing to hear it. *thanks for reading* Hi, I'm [Mischa](https://mischa.sigtermans.me/about). I've been *shipping products* and *building ventures* for over a decade. First exit at 25, second at 30. Now Partner & CPO at [Ryde Ventures](https://ryde.ventures), an AI venture studio in Amsterdam. Currently shipping [Stagent](https://stagent.com) and [Onoma](https://askonoma.com). Based in Hong Kong. I [write](https://mischa.sigtermans.me/thoughts) about what I learn along the way. [More about me](https://mischa.sigtermans.me/about). Keep reading: [Generic AI is a commodity, expert AI isn't](https://mischa.sigtermans.me/thought/generic-ai-is-a-commodity). [← Thoughts](https://mischa.sigtermans.me/thoughts) Connect ------- [X](https://x.com/mischamartijn) [LinkedIn](https://linkedin.com/in/mischasigtermans) [GitHub](https://github.com/mischasigtermans) © 2026 · [RSS](feed:https://mischa.sigtermans.me/feed)