i recently spoke in an event and was asked at the end "how do you keep yourself motivated as an entrepreneur?"
It is easy to be motivated and passionate at launch. But how do you keep the fire going on on a ride of a few years with many ups and downs?
To which i answered "stay frustrated with your own work"
The biggest danger is, in my opinion, being satisfied with your work. Satisfaction cools down the temperature and the energy you need to move on.
I don't know any good entrepreneur that is really happy with the current status of their business: not enough customers, not enough revenues, not enough feedbacks, product not good enough...They are always frustated and want more.
You need to feel what's wrong and where it's wrong. And many times you are the only one to be able to detect that. It does not matter. As long as you feel something is missing.
Transforming frustration in positive energy is the next important stuff. And the only way it can happen is when you have happy users or customers (or at least enough)
Happy users is what matters most. More than the features you dreamt of in your last release.
This is why getting attention to feedback is so important. And that is why any developer should dedicate all his energy to collect, as efficiently as possible, the impression from their users
Specifically in the app world this is very difficult because apps are little piece of software with no real user interaction with the developer
In our case we spent an important part of our time building the necessary bricks to collect in real time users' feedback. Believe me. IT IS AWESOME
Every notification you get is a drop of fuel in the motivation tank.
Bottom line: don't settle, find what's wrong, get feedback and stay motivated to iterate.
PS: if you want to know how we do it reach out...