One of the hardest things to do as a technology entrepreneur is to release your product when it’s first complete, but lacking all the extra features you think it needs.

As an entrepreneur, you’re likely a visionary and as such, you see your product as you’d like it to be in the future. You see all the bells and whistles. “Man, it needs that… it needs this… we can’t release it without that capability!” But guess what, you need to!

A handful of points here:

First, it’s important to start building a user base and to do that, you’ve got to get your product and brand out there. It’s likely going to be slow-going, so don’t waste any days when you could be accumulating users, who can become your very important brand followers. 

Second, if you were smart, you built your product starting with its core feature - what your product does uniquely. If this is such an important thing, then it’s done! And people can use it…

Third, remember that YOU are the visionary and not your users. Thus, while you see what your product will/should look like in the future… with all those extra features… your users probably don’t. To them, your product is already going to have great features: it’s core feature (aka the solution to the big problem you’re solving) and they’re going to like it.

Fourth, adding features is both icing on the cake (see “Third”) and expected… and necessary to have an ongoing relationship with your customers. As Mark Zuckerberg’s character in The Social Network said: “Software is like fashion; it’s never ‘done’.” This is true. Your users will expect constant updates throughout the life cycle of your software. So if you release your software before all the bells and whistles are done, then you’ll have the normal and expected flow of new feature additions that both keep your product current and keep users engaged and excited.

Also: Each new feature release can generate news, emails/Tweets/Facebook posts that you (and eventually the Bloggers and press) can spread to engage existing users and collect new ones.

Fifth, you’ll ensure that you’ll be seen as the innovator. As smart and insightful as you are, there are six billion people on Earth and at least one of them is at least nearly as insightful. This means, someone else may be working on the same thing. If they are and they release before you, even with an inferior product and at a time when you could have released something better (even though not as complete as you want), they could get branded as the innovator, the first mover… and take the market instead of you!

Sixth, they’re always be something new to add that’s, “just around the corner.” In other words, you may think, “let’s wait two weeks when X is done.” Guess what, in two weeks, X will be done, but then Y will only be two weeks from X… pretty soon, weeks turn to months and you lose your opportunity!

While there are a lot of positives, sure - there are some negatives: You could have a crappy product that people don’t like. Your product could break. Etc., etc. But all of these negatives are things that you have to face anyway - and the sooner you face them, the better.

The sooner you face an aspect of your software that people don’t like, the sooner you can fix it (while the guys who don’t release don’t have the feedback to do so). The sooner you discover a bug, the sooner you can repair it (and the more endeared to you the early user who reported it to you and watched you fix it will be), etc.

And even if your product is total garbage, the sooner you can find out and move on to the next thing. (Okay, let’s hope that one doesn’t happen!)

Anyway, my message to you is: Release your product. If it runs and it solves the core problem you’ve identified and that problem needs solving and you can reach the people who need it solved, you’ll start building your business. And there’s no better time for that!