Is it just me, or is launching harder than building?
Hey everyone,
I'm a product designer/dev. My happy place is building stuff—apps, websites, new tools. I can spend all day just making the product better.
But now I'm getting close to being "done" with my new digital project, and honestly... I'm feeling totally swamped by everything that comes next.
It feels like there's this giant mountain of "launch" stuff I'm supposed to do. You know, like:
- Creating all the social media accounts and... actually posting on them?
- Figuring out a Product Hunt launch (which looks like a full-time job)
- Maybe a Kickstarter?
- Writing to blogs or PR people
- Submitting the product to all those "new startup" directories
I'm just one person, and this marketing and managment stuff is not my strong suit at all. It's giving me real anxiety lol.
So I wanted to ask other founders and makers... how do you all handle this? Especially if you're solo or a tiny team?
Do you just have a simple checklist you stick to? What are the absolute essential things to do? Where do you even post to get those first few users?
And are there any tools that make this whole process less painful?
Seriously, any advice on how you manage all this "other stuff" would be a lifesaver. I just wanna get back to building.
Thanks!
I use google tasks which acts as a checklist, I have some days of posting on x, posting here, substack, linkedin and peerpush product updates. What's more important I think is continuing to post across those social medias consistently.
I definitely am not a fan of doing it though, I just decided to bite the bullet and throw stuff out there though.
My experience is the same as this brother's. I have many products, and I don't know what product to develop next. What really gives me a headache is promoting my products. I now have to stop developing and engage in social marketing. For lone wolves like us, we really don't want to spend money on promotion or simply don't have a bigger budget. Now, I have to post at least 30 articles about my products every day. To be honest, I really want to give up, but I don't have a better way.
I really feel this, especially the part about being a solo builder and burning out on promotion. Most of us didn’t start building because we wanted to be marketers.
One thing that might help: posting 30 articles a day is actually making this harder, not easier. Distribution works much better when you pick one product and one channel, then repeat the same message in different formats, rather than constantly creating new content.
For example, one real user problem → one short post → one simple demo → reuse it everywhere. No “marketing voice,” just documenting what already works.
You don’t need a budget; you need less noise and more focus. Even reducing this to 1 useful post per day can relieve a lot of pressure and still move things forward.
You’re not failing, you’re just exhausted from doing too much at once.