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20 Comments

Tell us about your launch! 🚀

It seems that the "gurus" often tout BIG launches, but in my experience with bootstrapped startups, it's much more common to have a small "launch" that doesn't blow up in an hour but grows steadily over time. As Ching hinted at in her recent post, It's better to "scale your business in a profitable way" rather than "build the next unicorn".

So I'm curious...

  1. What's your startup / side project?
  2. When did you launch it?
  3. How did you launch it? (i.e. Tell friends? Post it on IndieHackers? ProductHunt? Paid ads? All of the above? Something else?)
  4. Is there anything you would do differently next time? (or advice you have for other indie hackers about to launch)

Let us know!

  1. 3
    1. Recollect
    2. Soft-launched last Thursday
    3. Sent links to friends & coworkers who were waiting, and have been collecting product feedback the past few days. Also had the app featured on Divjoy in the showcase section. Since then have been getting all my loose ends tied up and beginning to post on social & around the web.
    4. So far so good, I think going for a big launch wouldn't have worked for me. I want to get feedback and grow slow but consistently. I'll do a bit of a formal "launch" after an update or two once I know things work the way I'm envisioning them.

    Fingers crossed!

    1. 2

      Recollect looks great! Congrats on the launch! I'm curious, how did you get featured on Divjoy? Good work!

      1. 2

        Thank you! Months ago I reached out to Gabe from Divjoy (a 1hr chat as part of the membership) and we talked for a while over zoom about everything. Since then we've kept tabs on eachother and when he saw that I had launched the app he actually reached out to me about putting it in the showcase which was super nice of him.

        1. 1

          That's awesome, thanks for the insight!

  2. 2

    I'm still in the early stages of research and development and this is super helpful to assist on the launch strategy. Although I agree that we can't wait until everything is perfect I fear that life would get on the way if I don't get some "public" pressure (nothing like feeling ashamed of being associated with a embarrassing product to be a motivation to work on the project!!!).

    I'll give myself a couple of weeks to post my platform here. ;)

    1. 1

      Glad this is helpful! Looking forward to hearing about what you're building!

  3. 2

    Hey guys,

    1. RemotExtra - a developer job board with transparent salaries
    2. About 3 days ago
    3. I went through this list: https://www.indiehackers.com/post/relaunch-like-a-pro-100-places-to-launch-relaunch-and-list-your-product-7c67875635 and also spent some on facebook advertising. I accumulated around 300 unique visitors in 3 days, not the worst, but I would like to at least get 10k monthly visitors. Still trying to figure it out how to do it though 😁
  4. 2
    1. GrowthHunt.co

    2. Slow-launched earlier this year. Around Feb/March

    3. Posted a free access to the database on Reddit back in March, which got me more than 500 subscribers.

    4. Build up an audience first, instead of trying to go viral and getting lots of subscribers.

    The free access that I gave out in March netted me only 1 sale. Most of them unsubscribed or did not engaged with my newsletters.

    I started scrubbing my email list (removing those who are not engaging) and that improved my engagement metrics drastically.

  5. 2
    1. hvrness.com

    2. launched this afternoon.

    3. Not really 'launched' it yet. The site is not going anywhere and I will improve the images/product.

    4. Learn rendering because taking great product photos is incredibly difficult. That's what I am going to start learning now.

    Thanks!

    1. 2

      Looks awesome, thanks for sharing!

  6. 1
    1. Sitch: Summarized investment research (https://getthesitch.com)
    2. I've gone through 2 soft launches, the first was for customer feedback and the second was last week after some major updates.
    3. The launch was through some ads on FB and friends. As I was building this while working, my job did not allow for outside projects in the contract so I was very limited in my ability to talk about it.
    4. Build that audience. This is a big piece that I'm continuously focusing on. I like the slower growth pace because it allows me to incorporate changes at a reasonable pace, but the audience growth is key.
  7. 1
    1. Chrome extension: Simple Tab Suspender

    Link: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/simple-tab-suspender/iceofolgiblcopdbdpconajapemjhelm/related

    1. Launched it last week on producthunt

    2. Mainly received users from sites with user-generated content like Quora and Reddit that were able to refer traffic to the extension, increase awareness, and reach niche audiences. Also, posted on Indie hackers and producthunt

    producthunt link: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/simple-tab-suspender

    1. Should have waited a bit more before launching on producthunt and build up an audience first
  8. 1
    1. Django Takeoff!! Course (Web Development using Django) https://www.devbalt.com
    2. July 23rd, 2021
    3. Product Hunt, Twitter, and Dev.to
      4.More marketing. As developers, we undermine marketing, and focus too much on adding features to products instead of getting the product to the hands of the people and then adding features based on feedback.
  9. 1
    1. Start of Startup
    2. A month ago.
    3. Soft launch. Sharing related articles on Indiehackers.
    4. My last side project was growing slow and not getting much traction. So this time I am trying to build an audience first.

    In the blog, I'm trying to summarize some basic knowledge about building a great product.
    From idea validation, coding, designing, to marketing...
    I try to write about the key lessons at each stages.
    I'm also doing some case studies.
    Always interested in how other startups started their journeys & how they make amazing things happened.

    By the way, if anyone is interested in sharing the story of your project, I'm happy to write about it and help you promote your project!

    1. 2

      Looks great what you have so far!

      I'd be interested in your offer. Feel free to reach out, I don't see any way to contact you 👍

      1. 1

        Happy to see that you're interested!
        I'm not active on Twitter though.
        Here's my email (startupbistro<at>gmail.com)
        Can't wait to read and share your story about Removaly or your other projects!

  10. 1
    1. I'm working on Cove Identity (https://coveidentity.com/), a secure privacy suite holding multiple features.

    2. We started working on the product a few years back and were growing slowly. We recently launched on Product Hunt to start reaching out to a wider audience. Have some aggressive targets for the year!

    3. Of course, we first tapped into our immediate circle and existing communities. Now we've extended to other communities like PH and indie hackers, where we share what we're building and learn a lot more from other founders and get feedback.

    4. Go in with a plan but be active in making changes wherever needed. Don't forget to engage your existing audience and build user stickiness as you bring on new users. And always take feedback with a pinch of salt!

    1. 1

      Nice!! I was going to reach out to you privately, but I don't see a way to contact you (feel free to reach out to me). What do you mean exactly when you say "military-grade encryption" on your website? I'd be interested to know!

      1. 2

        Hey! Sorry, I completely missed this comment so didn't give you a revert.

        AES 256-bit encryption is preferred by governments and militaries around the world for communication and storage of sensitive data. And that is exactly what we use at Cove, which is why we term it is military-grade encryption. Even in general, the term military-grade encryption is generally used synonymously with 256-bit encryption. Hope that answers your query!

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