Day#2 Doubts, Bugs, and Testing: How to Stay Clear in Your Startup

Embracing Doubt and Bugs: The Path to a Stronger Startup Product

Constantly questioning your own product is normal and even necessary for growth. In startups, we can’t afford to be comfortable — we need to constantly stress-test the product.

I often get frustrated when I encounter bugs in the app. They need to be fixed over and over again, while other parts of the product constantly demand improvements and fine-tuning.

And this happens despite the fact that I personally assembled this team, fully aware of their skills and competencies, and we’ve successfully completed many other projects together.

But when you’re building a startup, many features evolve during development. You often rethink them or simply aim to make things easier for the end user.

You simply can’t rely on an average project to claim its share of the market

Today, even in the early stages of product development, you can’t afford to release a weak product. Why? Because users will leave for any reason: they didn’t understand your project, your call to action wasn’t clear, the page loaded too slowly, the design didn’t impress — or worse, scared them away.

And there are hundreds of reasons like these. Additionally, the tech industry is incredibly competitive. The market is filled with high-quality projects that can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars without even flinching, while young startup teams are still struggling to find their audience.

An example of why 67 percent of USERS LEFT AND NEVER CAME BACK to us.

Continuous improvement is the path every new project must choose

Test, test, and test again — that’s what the entire team should do in the early stages of development, always asking the question: Is this good enough? Will the user like this?

We started with manual testing on various devices: Chrome, Safari, Firefox, desktop, tablet, mobile — both real and virtual devices. And when it seemed obvious to us that everything was working perfectly, we let users navigate through the product on their own.

And you know what? They got lost.

All of our highly creative ideas turned out to be too complicated for them. Large, beautiful text, super flashy animations, and so on — it all scared our users away.

We had to simplify our product multiple times before we finally saw that people could successfully reach the final goal — to create a good, high-quality resume.

A fresh perspective is always needed, so never forget about that.

Invest in Testing Early to Save Big on Bug Fixes Later

Now that we’ve narrowed down our set of clear and stable features, we are covering our application with automated tests. It’s a time-consuming and costly process, but it’s the only way to ensure a truly high-quality product for years to come.

We are implementing automated testing across all critical aspects: covering our API with extensive tests to ensure data integrity and communication between services, functional tests to simulate real user interactions, and implementation tests to check how individual components behave. This comprehensive testing approach helps us catch potential issues early and maintain long-term stability as the product evolves.

The Most Crucial Team Member When the Pressure Is On

As the Founder & CEO, your role in times when the application is riddled with errors is to stay resilient and keep the team motivated. It’s crucial to remind everyone that setbacks like bugs are part of the process and not a sign of failure. Inspire the team by emphasizing that each bug fixed is a step closer to delivering a product that users will love. Encourage a culture of learning and improvement, where each challenge is viewed as an opportunity to refine the product. Your energy and belief in the project will fuel your team’s determination to push through the tough times.”

“However, it’s important to remember that time and resources are limited. You must prioritize effectively, focusing on the most critical issues that will have the biggest impact on the MVP. The goal is to deliver a functional product as quickly as possible, while ensuring it provides enough value to attract your first users. Balance between quality and speed is key — while perfection isn’t necessary at this stage, the core experience must be seamless. Your leadership will guide the team to move forward swiftly, with a clear vision of the end goal in sight.

Forward, always forward. This is an especially challenging phase, but the bright future lies ahead. Right now, we need to run twice as fast. And I’m running — are you?

Here is our product — AI RESUME BUILDER.

Anton Lytvynov
CEO and Founder of LYTVYNOV PRODUCTION, a developer with a passion for changing lives for the better