If you're not embarrassed when you ship your first version, you waited too long.
Interpretation
It's important to take action and not delay due to fear of imperfection.
This quote by Matt Mullenweg emphasizes the importance of taking initiative and launching projects without overthinking or striving for perfection. If you are overly concerned about how your initial effort will be received, it likely means you have hesitated too long, and true learning and improvement come from putting your ideas into action and refining them over time.
In practice
In a startup meeting to motivate the team to launch their MVP.
One thing about open source is that even the failures contribute to the next thing that comes up. Unlike a company that could spend a million dollars in two years and fail and there's nothing really to show for it, if you spend a million dollars on open source, you probably have something amazing that other people can build on.
Usage is like oxygen for ideas. That means every moment you're working on something without it being in the public it's actually dying, deprived of the oxygen of the real world.
We focus on two things when hiring. First, find the best people you can in the world. And second, let them do their work. Just get out of their way.
There is no substitute for hard work. If you're looking for the easy way, if you're looking for the trick, you might get by for a while, but you will not be developing the talents that lie within you. There is simply no substitute for work.
Commend while others are criticizing, persist while others are quitting
Try, try, try, and keep on trying is the rule that must be followed to become an expert in anything.
Weak men wait for opportunities; strong men make them.
There are always new, grander challenges to confront, and a true winner will embrace each one.
There is a place in God's sun for the youth "farthest down" who has the vision, the determination, and the courage to reach it.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.