Sometimes it’s better to ship nothing

Seth Godin says it’s better to ship nothing than it would be to ship an inferior product.

I think back to a few companies I’ve worked for who were in the position of making a go/no go decision on a product. I can only think of one instance where the decision was made to not ship. And looking back it turned out to be the best decision.

It takes some guts to not ship. You have invested in a lot of time, money and resources into the project. The last thing you want to do is kill it. But even worse would be to ship a product that damages your reputation and hurts future business.