Finally launched yesterday! Here's what went right, and what went wrong

Budgetwise - Zero Sum Budgeting and Debt Management

After months of working until 3am+, Budgetwise (https://www.budgetwise.io/) finally launched yesterday.

Here is the actual post-mortem blog post: https://blog.budgetwise.io/2018/07/27/launch-postmortem/ but I will post here more about the developer's side of things!

A brief overview of the numbers (I am keeping things a bit generalized as I don't want to disclose specific numbers)

• Mailing list built since November '17, over 4.4k signups to be notified about early access
• About 1.4k have signed up so far
• Several subscribers, generating > $1.3k in the first 24 hours
• About 80 dropped emails due to deliverability issues from Mailgun
• 54 unsubscribed from the mailing list after sending out the mass mail
• There are currently only 6 articles in the help center, and by far the most viewed was the "Budgetwise Quick Start Tutorial"

Positive Feedback:
Lots of good things being said about the design decisions, the open communication, and the general responsiveness I've been trying to achieve. Because I've been transparent since the start, I think the right expectations were set in terms of usability, what stage it's in, delays, and anything else that might have come up.

Negative feedback:
It's unusable for some heavier users due to some important missing features, and I totally dropped the ball by not having a reset password feature ready to go by launch. Do NOT underestimate how used this tool is! Also, the sheer number of bugs found can be daunting, but the beauty of it is you have tons of users using it in different ways, so discovering these bugs is a good way to know how users are actually using your product, and what to focus on in terms of features or improvements.

Key takeaways for any indie hacker getting ready to launch:

• Double and triple check your marketing site to make sure everything is clear
• Make sure the basic user flows are there and working properly (email verify, password reset, subscription management, etc)
• Test your product as much as possible. It will never be enough, but don't let that discourage you
• Focus on providing a good onboarding experience
• Prepare for getting a HUGE amount of feedback, bugs, comments, and general thank you notes on the first day. If you choose to use something like Intercom's Inbox, be ready to spend the entire time communicating with users. I am not exaggerating when I say I was non-stop talking to users from the time it launched around 10am, up until I went to sleep around midnight.If possible, bring a second person up to speed on your product, have prepared answers for common questions you will expect to receive, and have them help you respond to people's feedback and questions.
• Have food prepared for the day, and take frequent breaks so you don't get burned out during the first day's craziness.
• Spend some time unwinding afterwards, maybe go catch a movie or go for a nice drive. You'll come back way more focused and refreshed