Your Startup Is Dying Because You Fix Too Many Bugs

Your startup isn’t dying from bugs. It’s dying because you keep fixing the wrong ones. I built a simple rule to decide which bugs to ignore (yes, even the one still live at indie10k.com 👀). Do you fix everything… or let some ride?

This bug I didn’t fix looked awful.

A user added some data, clicked Save, and… nothing happened. Blank screen. Crickets.

They thought it was broken. But under the hood, the data was saved — I just forgot to refresh the list.

I panicked: “This is it. They’ll rage-quit.”

But nope. The user hit refresh, saw their data, and moved on. I didn't get even complain.

That’s when it clicked: most bugs don’t kill your startup.

But dropping everything to fix them will kill your momentum.

🔥 My Bug Rules (a.k.a. The “Do I Care?” Test)

1. Adoption blockers. Can people sign up? Yes → ship. No → fix it yesterday.

Example: Stripe checkout failing? 🔥 Fire drill.

Example: Signup button misaligned on mobile? Meh.

2. Engagement killers. Does it stop the core loop? → fix soon.

Example: “Save” button doesn’t actually save? Yeah, fix that.

Example: Loading spinner spins too long but still works? Welcome to indie dev life.

3. Outcome stealers. Can users still get a win? If yes, defer. If no, fix.

Example: Can’t share progress screenshot = fix.

Example: Annoying tooltip overlap = defer.

4. Trust nukes: Payments broken, data loss, privacy leaks → never defer.

Example: Double charge on credit card? Fix before lunch.

Example: Dark mode button does nothing? Refresh and move on.

💡 The ugly truth:

Every indie hacker I know has wasted days polishing a “critical” bug that users didn’t even notice. Meanwhile, the real growth work sat untouched.

Momentum > perfection.

Ship > pixel perfect.

Trust, adoption, outcomes → those are the only bugs that deserve my 2 a.m. panic.

👉 Try it yourself

Head over to indie10k.com and see if you can spot the feature that still behaves exactly like my first “Save → nothing happens” bug.

(I know about it. I still haven’t fixed it. On purpose.)

Comment if you find it. 😉