> Our primary success factor was starting with a rough draft. We didn't like our v1 much—an all cotton tufted mattress—but that didn't keep us from launching with it. This gave us a chance to experiment with problem/solution and to start collecting feedback right away. We had to do quite a few returns at first but we iterated constantly until our customer satisfaction was high enough for us to start getting referrals.

Putting myself in your shoes, this seems like a scary way to go about things. I'd think, "those first returns are from unsatisfied people. They'll give the product bad reviews and that will put the score in a negative rut it won't be able to pull itself out of. Yes, the next version will be amazing because of the initial feedback, but now we'll have bad reviews so people won't even give it a chance."

Would you mind explaining how I'm thinking about this the wrong way? Perhaps you never put v1 on Amazon and that's how you avoided my concern? But doing so seems like it could limit the feedback you get on v1.