When building products, it turns out “we’re almost done” is basically when all the real work starts. — Aaron Levie

When building products, it turns out “we’re almost done” is basically when all the real work starts.

Author: Aaron Levie

Insight: There's this weird thing that happens around 80% completion on almost anything—a project at work, a house renovation, learning a skill. You've cleared the big hurdles, you can almost taste the finish line, and suddenly you realize the remaining 20% is going to take as long as the first 80% combined. It's demoralizing in a way that the hard beginning wasn't, because at least then you didn't know what you were in for. This applies even more brutally to building something people actually want to use. The core idea might work, the basic mechanics might function, but then comes the grinding work: handling edge cases nobody thought about, making it fast enough, smoothing out the friction points that only become obvious when real people try it. This is where most ambitious projects quietly die—not from fundamental flaws, but from the exhausting, unglamorous work of refinement that lacks the momentum and novelty of the early stages. The real insight here is that "almost done" isn't a sign you're close to victory. It's a signal that the project is about to demand something different from you—less inspiration, more patience. Understanding that shift in advance, accepting that the last stretch is actually its own full project, might be the only thing that keeps you from abandoning something genuinely good right before it becomes great.

Source: How to Build a Product II, Aaron Levie - Box Video Lecture - Startup School