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What's your pre-launch strategy?

I'm building a resource for preparing for the coding interview right now, called The Coding Interview. It's my first money-making idea (hopefully!) and I'm planning to launch the beta at the end of the year, with official release not long after it.

I'm wondering what you guys do before your launch. At the moment I'm doing this:

  • Allowing people to sign up for the beta, which will also sign them up for a newsletter with coding interview tips & updates on the product
    --> A few people on Twitter are telling me I should release each 'module' of the product on beta, rather than waiting until it's all complete to release. What do you think of that?

  • Growing my own Twitter profile & tweeting about the progress of The Coding Interview

  • Making some other fun free apps with wider appeal to attract people to me & my other products

  • Guest blogs

This is my first real product and I'm really excited about it, but I have no real clue about marketing and launch strategies. I'd love to hear what your plans are and what works for you!

  1. 3

    I learnt a lot from this talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xU050kMbHM
    Especially as a coder, it's very easy to have long forward visions (>3 months) of building cool things and then shipping them at the end and I sed to do this all the time. Now I'm far more focussed on building something and getting it into people hands, like every week. I don't consider my current project "launched" yet cos its still in the "embarassing MVP" phase, but really there's not going to be any difference when it does "launch" except it will look nicer and have a few more features.
    For coding interview, I'm sure there is lot's of content you can put up. There are a lot of people looking for engineering jobs since COVID and companies are starting to hire again from what I can see. Now would be a great time to get content out there - i've not seen the market so lop-sided in all my time hiring.

    1. 1

      Second this - probably the most important resource I've come across on this topic

  2. 3

    You'll probably have read this in many different places, but when I see 'launch beta at the end of the year' I'm wondering if you're not taking too long. Unless you feel you've validated your product, why not launch sooner in smaller chunks (like your followers suggested)? You really want to avoid spending months to build something only to find that people don't want it, or that it's not going to be the commercial success that you want it to be.

    Second, a tip might be to not to require people to sign up for the beta to be on the email list. I would add a 'Keep me posted' email signup, as that requires much less buy in from people you'll likely grow your list much faster!

    1. 2

      I second this, I think it would be a pity to spend so long building something only to have no market demand once you launch. You are already doing so many amazing things by growing your audience across social channels and sharing blog posts. All these people can serve as your initial feedback loop for releasing your smaller chunks and help you to iterate as you build. Keep up the great work!

    2. 1

      Yeah, I will probably launch the beta in small chunks. I haven't heard of this strategy before, which is why I was a bit hesitant - but you're definitely right about the end of the year being a little long!

      Great idea about a 'keep me posted' signup. Thanks for the tip.

  3. 2

    I wrote up a something about our experience and timeline if it's helpful.

    The key takeaways :

    • From that Kat Manalac video @krishan711 mentioned - never stop launching - you'll get many cracks at it. Try stuff out early on, get feedback, recalibrate, launch again.
    • Post to Betalist - was a low effort effective way to get subscribers - would recommend but not necessarily pay for the expedited service.
    • Most people will forget who you are or why they signed up for your launch. Make sure you remind them when you invite them to the demo, especially if they pre-registered weeks or months ago.
    • It's great to have pre-registered users, but don't expect all of them to take you up on signing up.
    • The best way we found to get early adopters was after the product was live, and then spending time in communities and Slack groups where our target users lived. If they were at all interested in what we were working on, we'd try and book an onboard directly.
    • Be targetted in whom you reach out to join. If you are doing a closed beta, focus on people whom you think need your product. Otherwise, you'll spend lots of time talking to, or trying to please, people who don't need your product. Respect their time and yours.

    Good luck 🎉

  4. 1

    One thing I really want to add to this conversation is that I initially read the title as pre-lunch rather than pre-launch.

    Pre-lunch 😭
    Pre-launch ✨

  5. 2

    This comment was deleted 3 months ago.

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