Starting a Product? Spare at least 2 years

Success doesn't happen overnight. We always see the tip of the iceberg when we read the news and see a good product without usually knowing how hard and for how long someone or a group of people worked before generating that amazing outcome.

Take, for example, the Phoenix Framework, written in Elixir. When it was posted on Hacker News on August 29th, 2015, it had more than 790 points. However, the first commit pushed to GitHub was on January 12th, 2014, one and a half years before it became notorious. It's also worth mentioning that they had 90 contributors during this period, although only 2 were the outliers.

This is just one example. You can compare it with any product you want. To complete your research, you can use Google Trends to analyze the popularity of keywords over time as well. The essence is the same.

I'm telling you this because it's very common at a certain point in your career to want to start your own project, to want to run your own business. Assuming that you will start it alone and with your own funding, you will need at least 2 years. If we take the Phoenix Framework as an example, considering that it will be developed by 1 person alone, it would take 3 years at the same pace.

This is important because it will allow you to plan the product roadmap better and also lower your expectations during this time. Consequently, it will help you avoid getting depressed by thoughts such as "More than 1 year has passed and I can see no results yet. Why?".

That's all I have for today :)

Have a great 2016!