Ship Fast, Build Strong: Avoiding the Straw House Trap When Going from Prototype to Production
Apr 30, 2025
Ever feel like your quick prototype is a straw house, perfect until a gust of real users blows through?
That’s the heart of the ship vs. scale dilemma—and knowing which to focus on can save you a lot of sweat.
Shipping: Get to “Hello, world!” fast
When you’re proving an idea, your goal is simple: turn a thought into something people can touch, click, or play with.
You don’t need a fortress—just four walls and a roof made of whatever you have on hand.
Bugs and other things not ‘working right’?
You’re the only one using it, so you can patch leaks as they appear.
Scaling: Building for the crowd
Once strangers show up, the rules change. Now your little straw house needs solid foundations:
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Performance: Can it handle dozens, hundreds, or thousands of visitors?
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Reliability: Will it stay standing when someone trips over an edge case?
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Maintainability: Can you update it without knocking down the whole structure?
If you jump straight to steel beams before you know anyone actually wants to live there, you’ll spend weeks—or months—building for ghost tenants.
Don’t do that.
When to upgrade your build
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You’ve got real users. People are clicking “Download,” “Sign up,” or “Buy.” That’s your green light.
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You hit repeat bugs. If you’re fixing the same potholes over and over, it’s time for better roads.
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New features are too slow. When adding something small feels like rewriting half the app, you’ve outgrown your makeshift shelter.
At that point, go back and re-architect: swap straw for brick in the areas that matter most.
But don’t overbuild for a million users if you haven’t seen a hundred—that’s overkill.
Check out the original post on LinkedIn
