Let’s face it: if you’ve built a product you know that many times there are things that you’ll have to do manually or else you’ll never launch. And that’s called Flintstoning.
Flintstoning is when your product or startup itself lacks a feature, BUT, you can make up for it manually. This is valuable while you see what works and what doesn’t. It’s when manual human effort fills in for product functionality that hasn’t been built yet or for user activity that hasn’t happened yet.
Fred Flintsone has a car – it looks like a car, it functions like a car but it’s powered by feet.
The same concept can be applied to your product.
Like Fred Flintstone powering his car by running, you are manually keeping the product alive and working.
Early on, this is one of the important product decisions to make. Which part of the experience to build end-to-end and what to decidedly do manually for the sake of learning a process inside out before you try to automate it.
Flintstoning is a fine art and if used well, it will help you launch and get early feedback from your audience. This early feedback is super important to get your product to the next stage.
PS: it also creates anxiety… you know that things might not work properly, but you have a workaround… and it’s worth it!