Launching over and over again
There's a huge difference between shipping a product, soft launching, and launching. And there's no rule that says you can only launch once.
It took a fair amount of effort for me to divorce these ideas in my own mind. The novice mindset of "if you build it, they will come" is still one of those pervasive attitudes that prevents us from being successful. And yet as developers it's so natural to labor over our project and then, upon shipping it, think to ourselves "I'm finally done!"
I love the soft launch. It's like a waypoint between shipping and launching. It helps me get out of my engineering mindset. Soft launching reminds me: "your code still has a ton of undiscovered bugs". Soft launching shows me code paths I didn't anticipate.
Showing my project to an audience for the first time is that precious moment when your labor of love meets the ruthlessness of the market. It is a glorious thing to behold.
And then, days or weeks later, the launch. Whether you're posting on Product Hunt or you're unleashing a press embargo, launching is an event. It's an investment, it usually takes planning and coordination, and it is often a chance to rally the team's morale around the fact that "we did it!".
And what happens when the launch doesn't go as expected? Will your brand be forever tarnished? Will your audience conclude that you're a clown and not want to buy your products?
Unless you're a Fortune 500, probably not. And in fact, you should just launch again.
Sometimes it feels strange to launch a product more than once. We think our audience will get tired of hearing about us. We anticipate that they'll be confused: "wait, didn't this already launch?" We worry that we'll seem desperate. And so on.
But we need to remember that the world is absolutely gargantuan. There are so many people that still haven't even heard about you. So even though your message is new to some people, for the vast majority of prospective customers, you are brand new.
Every time you launch, even the same messaging and feature set, there are people who are hearing about you for the first time. That first impression.
Go launch!
Y Combinator's Startup School Curriculum has a talk on this subject, How to Launch (Again and Again).
Your launch also doesn't have to be a huge spectacle. You can do it quietly and at your own pace.
Agreed. And it means that you don't burn out and can rebound if your startup fails.
This month I launched my first product:
NetWorthy
https://bit.ly/38Eu80I
I tried:
-Reddit: posting a casual intro of my product on sub-reddits.
-Twitter: commenting a casual intro of my product, on related tweets.
-Hacker News: posting a one sentence intro of my product.
-Instagram: commenting a casual intro of my product, on related posts.
-YouTube: commenting a casual intro of my product, on related videos.
So far, the channel with the best results was Hacker News.
However, I was not able to convert yet.
With the insights I got from the traffic I received, I am trying to pivot and improve some aspects of my landing page.
Indie Hackers: I would love to hear about your strategies:
With love,
Philip
What's worked for me is to go to the places your customers go for their specific niche (go really narrow if possible). For example, my product (QueryClips) is now listed on the Postgresql wiki as a product that is capable of integrating with Postgres. I don't get a ton of traffic from it but it's nonzero and it's reliable.
Go find places your customers ask questions and answer their questions helpfully. Quora used to be great for that, I'm not sure if it still is. Searching twitter for relevant recent keywords and participating in conversations can work. Same with reddit - but not simply posting. Answer questions, weigh in helpfully, etc.
You can also try paying to be featured in niche newsletters, that's worked for me in the past. But not everyone has the budget.
One of the things here is to define what a "launch" really is.
We posted our product on betalist recently - got 150 visits, 15 lead magnet signups, and working with a few early adopters/pilot projects as a result. Is this a "launch"? Or simply marketing to a new cohort?
Or does a "launch" need to be a multi-channel, fanfare moment with dancing elephants and clowns on stilts broadcast to thousands of people?
Every two weeks, we have a few feature tweaks, some UI refinements, etc. After getting that first "launch" out of the way, feels more like we are "launching" every day.
Shameless plug/launch - we've built whatifi.io - a highly visual, low-code style financial scenario and projections platform. We help Founders and financial decision makers VISUALLY create, compare and share "what if" scenarios with their teams, clients and investors. No formulas. No spreadsheets.
If you don't want to look like spam, wait a bit, gather feedback, and ship a bunch of new features plus UI changes relaunch on as 2.0.
How do you launch again? Do you have platform and tips to share? Product Hunt won't let you launch the same product in six months.
That is a very reasonable time lapse.
Yeah, my cofounder and I built https://dashibase.com/ in a few days and decided to launch on Product Hunt, instead of waiting until the perfect moment (which doesn't exist) because we know we will be launching several times. The reality is that few people would even hear about us from our first few launches. But each launch would help us validate our idea a little bit more.
When I was at Buffer, we also considered launching new features multiple times for similar reasons. E.g. we would launch the feature, then package it with other new features for the next launch, etc.
Like how your product saves time. Usually even big PH launches with 1000 signups result in 5 long-term paying users. Consider making first 20 sales in one-on-one chats. Can help you with those, let's connect on Twitter.
Yep, we are exploring that. Thanks!
I wonder if there are people out there who just buy a different domain, change the design a bit and then launch on PH over and over and over again.
Got it, so today I'm launching a leaderboard for my gamified habit tracker 🚀😅
Great article, Dave!
We launch a lot and our fans always say that we are commendable for being so persistent... "damn... you guys launching stuff all the time!"
Exactly. Love this post. I come from an engineering background too, and had to convince myself to launch quickly irrespective of some bugs etc.
Thanks for this post! Any other suggestions for us engineers?
Ha, this is my source of future content ;)
Great post Dave, I totally agree.
"Sometimes it feels strange to launch a product more than once. We think our audience will get tired of hearing about us." - do you think part of the reason is also to do with shame? It's bad enough to "fail" once, but it's even more daunting to think it could happen twice, with the same product! What happens then, do you launch again? When and why would you reach a stage where you say "enough's enough"?
It definitely has to do with us tightly coupling our work product w/ our ego and sense of self. That's for sure.
Even when I don't successfully decouple these two things, it helps to reframe a lackluster launch as successfully learning something rather than failing to get users. For example, if I can get even one person to give me feedback after a lackluster soft launch, it's not a total disaster.
And knowing that I can always try again later, even with a completely different product if necessary, helps with the feeling of failure (for me).
Very true. A launch that 'flops' becomes a personal failure if we'd listen to our brain (or conditioning or whatever you call it).
When you fall off your bike, you might think you'll never be able to ride a bike. But that fall only takes you one step closer to learning how to ride a bike. So you have to keep telling your brain that.