We built Comus from the ground up with a lot of things hard-coded and designed simply to work, not to follow best practice.
That was deliberate. The goal was to get something live, prove the concept, and see if the model stacked up. And it did. It worked. If you want the background, you can read more about Comus here.
Proving the Model, Then Doing It Properly
By October, we knew we’d proved the model. We had a working system. At that point, the next step was obvious: go back and build it properly.
That sounds like starting again, but it wasn’t. It was refinement. We already understood how the system worked. The logic was there. The workflows were mapped out. What we needed to do was make it dynamic, clean it up visually, and make sure all the little admin features actually worked properly.
How hard could that be? Just tidying up what’s already there, right?
One or two months. Surely.
Four Months In, Still Squashing Bugs
We’re now in the fourth month of this rebuild, and it’s getting to both of us.
We won’t give in. It will work. But the bug-squashing has been relentless. Every time we think we’re ready to push it live, something breaks. Or something else gets knocked out of place.
It’s exhausting. We’ve been “about to go live” for over a month now. We keep meeting up to push it over the line, and even yesterday we spent six solid hours together doing nothing but trying to get past bugs.
Knowing It Will Be Worth It (Eventually)
Once it’s done, it will be amazing. I know that.
But getting there has been fucking awful.
The worst part is knowing that people are waiting to use the system. We know what needs to be done. We know it works. We can see the finish line. We just can’t quite cross it yet.
That’s brutal.
The Only Advice I Can Give
If I had to give one piece of advice to anyone going through something similar, it’s this: software can absolutely be the foundation of a great business model. But getting there is hard. Harder than you think.
Just don’t quit.
It Could Be Worse
I was talking about this with a friend today. She tried to launch an app and spent four years going through the same kind of process. Two rounds of funding just to get it to beta.
I don’t envy that at all.
At least we don’t have investors breathing down our necks.
That would definitely make this worse.
