Public Retro of my first Product Hunt launch!

Hello!

We launched a big update to our Live Chat tool, Assistant, late November on Product Hunt, and whilst we were doing a retro the idea came out to share this in public...so here we go. What could we have done better?

What went well:

• We had a clear, relevant message
• We got 212 upvotes, a whole bunch of lovely comments and 1000 visits to our landing page (450 of these coming direct from Product Hunt).
• Our landing page looks slick and tells a good story - we feel proud of the quality of work we shipped.

What didn't go well:

• We chose our launch date: 25th November. Which was then delayed by a day, and we launched on Thanksgiving. Not smart.
• We ended up pushing the launch by a day because of an AWS issue...whilst this felt like the right decision at the time it meant that a publicly shared date was missed, which isn't a standard we want to work at.
• The last days running up to launch were a scrabble. We talk a lot about getting the balance right between moving fast as a business (more chaos) and moving slower and risking getting left behind.

What are we doing about it?:

• Building out a playbook to follow next time around, so we don't miss anything. This needs to include a follow up plan. The launch doesn't stop on launch day...we should keep working on sharing the product in the weeks after.
• Strengthening our communication between Product and Marketing teams. A lot of the messaging could have been done earlier if our comms were stronger.
• Giving ourselves more time - we'd have loved to test out messaging before we stuck to it.
• Set smaller deadlines, instead of just aiming everything at the launch date.

So, how do you think we did? And what would you have done differently? This was the first launch I've ever been the lead on... so all advice appreciated!