Avoid Complexity When Starting

I’m not that young anymore. It’s been over a decade since I wrote my first lines of code. Since then, I’ve worked on software projects across many industries, as an employee, freelancer, contractor, and founder.

Today, I want to share one of the most important lessons I’ve learned while building a real-world software:

🧠Avoid Complexity When Starting

When you’re building the first version of a product, complexity is your biggest enemy. As a developers, we often imagine our product being used by million users on day one. This fantasy leads us to overengineer everything. We start thinking about scaling, modularity, microservices… when we don’t even have a working login yet.

But this problem isn’t just on the technical side.

Stakeholders often want to include every feature they can imagine. Multiple flows, reports, dashboards, and user types. All in the first release. 😬

It’s natural. Everyone is excited. But the truth is:

• ❌You don’t need the best version on day one.
• ✅ You need the most focused version that actually solves a real problem.

How I Avoid This Today

First rule: Don’t panic.

You’re perfectly capable of building what matters, as long as you know what really matters.

Here are the questions I ask before starting.

• How many users do we actually expect in the first month? And in the first year?
• What’s the most important “Job To Be Done” we can deliver in version 1?
• What can we remove from the backlog without breaking the value?

These questions change everything. They bring clarity.

Once you answer them honestly, you’ll know where to start and what to postpone.

That’s it for today.

Juliano Nicocelli