

Ask HN: Should I launch anyway if unhappy about my product? - mattbell

I've been working on my startup full-time for 13 months now. (http://taketake.com)<p>I can't seem to nail that design - that feeling I'm looking for. We've changed the UI and the design roughly 5 times now. 6 months ago I stumbled on the Lean Startup philosophy; the launch early, scrappy and iterate doing customer development. I kept telling myself that I will launch in a few weeks so it was too late to "start from scratch" and apply the Lean Startup idea. But it's been 6 months now and I can't seem to get out of this stupid cycle of me being unhappy and wanting to have everything perfect before I launch.<p>Because of this, other startups like Blippy, Swipely (and gdgt to some extent) beat me to the push. My reaction when I saw this was to try harder and build features they don't have - so that when I launch our site we would one-up them.<p>Now I feel like I was wrong. I should have launched months ago and done more customer development to make sure I'm not building something people won't care about.<p>Somehow it is so difficult for me to release something that is not perfect. I can hear Gary V. telling me to "quit the bitch train" and launch already.<p>At this point I have three competitors; gdgt, Blippy and Swipely. They've got big launches with lots of PR attention and now getting traction while I'm losing my time pixel by pixel.<p>I guess I'm scared of failing and don't want to launch because of that - or I'm trying to pull a Steve Jobs with the resources of a non-VC backed startup.<p>Should I just take my time and release when I'm happy about my product and not care about my competitors getting traction - or should I hurry to get in the market to get my piece of the pie asap?<p>Your thoughts are appreciated :)
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malbiniak
Launch...but don't blow your wad on marketing until you think you're ready. If
you're not confident in it, I'm not sure how you're going to sell it. A small
launch within your network could get you the feedback you're looking for.

Don't beat yourself up about Blippy, gdgt, and Swipely. What did they do
right? What did they do wrong? What can you learn from them (and on their
dollar)? And -- are they REALLY your competitors?

Two last comments. If your design is on the level of your blog design, you'll
be fine. It's really clean with clear and concise messaging. Also, have you
considered the widening "products you love" into "things you love?" I'm being
selfish, but I'd love to be able to follow new "products" from "things I
love," like bands. Forget that last thought :)

~~~
mattbell
Yeah the idea of releasing the site but "not launching it" (thinking of
marketing launch here) sounds like a good idea. Perhaps doing an invite only
on Hacker News could get me the feedback needed to tune things up for the
marketing launch thereafter.

I like the idea of "things I love" - see? That's why I need to get our site
out there and get some feedback! Cheers!

------
damoncali
LAUNCH IT NOW, MAN!

 _It will never be perfect. Ever._

You shouldn't be afraid of failing. This is not a one shot game. Your launch
will show you some areas where you did things right and some where you screwed
the pooch. It's about never ending improvement, not a shot in the dark that
results in binary success or failure.

But one thing is certain - you need users to improve. You can't do that by
yourself. So put away the IDE, and start pounding the pavement for users.
There will be plenty of time later for improvements.

So yeah, you are right. You should have launched months ago. But who cares?
Learn and move on.

You won't have any users right away anyhow, so relax and enjoy the process.

~~~
mattbell
You're right. This is not a one shot game. It is something that I will keep
working on. Somehow after all this time has passed, it's embarrassing to
launch a minimum viable product because people will say "Oh, that's it?". But
that's just in my head and need to get over my fears. Cheers!

------
marknutter
Launch it. The name of the game is GETTING USERS. The sooner you begin that
process, the more you'll have in the long run. Even if you only have 5
dedicated, hardcore users, if the product works well for them they will
evangelize and spread the word for you. Right now, you're killing that word-
of-mouth opportunity by keeping your app private.

LAUNCH IT. When you do, you'll be surprised at how anti-climactic it is and
wonder why you spent so much time worrying about it. The reason why you _can_
launch early is because you don't have the same PR blitzes the bigger guys do.
Grow slowly, steadily, and introduce the features your users are asking for
the most. If you have the staying power, you have a real shot overcoming the
other guys, especially since they have to be the ones who make the first major
mistakes (think Blippy's PR nightmare a few months back).

Good luck!

~~~
mattbell
Thanks for the feedback. One of the things that has been keeping me back from
launching is this idea that I've got "only one shot at making the first
impression".

I'm coming to realize that while the above statement is true, there are other
things at play too. Cheers!

------
Mc_Big_G
You'll be more unhappy that you wasted so much time than you are unhappy with
the product. You'll feel really dumb if you waste all that time perfecting
something no one cares about. Trust me, I know.

~~~
mattbell
I hear you, I'm at that point now where I'm embarrassed by all the time I've
wasted. Thanks for the feedback, cheers!

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andyhin
Matt,

You need to launch - now. I was in a similar position a few years ago with one
of my first startups. We spent months on development even though we had a
usable product done very quickly. We analyzed our competitors, and constantly
tried to one-up them while hiding in stealth mode. We were never completely
happy with the product, as it seemed to always be missing some feature.
Feature creep hit, and we spent another few months developing.

This proved to be a big mistake. The problem here is that we tried to predict
how our users would use our product, wasting tons of time developing features
we thought potential users would like (we didn't have any actual users at this
point). This took our product in the wrong direction - when we launched it
seemed users didn't use it the way we intended - most of the features were
never used.

In hindsight, instead of spending time predicting and implementing features
that would never be used, we should have just launched the product and evolved
the way users ACTUALLY use it.

~~~
mattbell
Thanks for sharing this with me, it's very helpful. We have a lot of guessing
going on, and you're right; we should wait to see how users will want to use
the site and get feedback before building stuff people might not care about.
Cheers!

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thinker
Looking at your demo, you definitely have a launch-worthy v1. Do it now!

I think you're sufficiently differentiated from Blippy and Swipely, and even
if you aren't - so what? How many people outside of HN and the Valley know of
these two startups? There's a ton of users to acquire and engage and you are
by no means behind in the game.

I really liked your gallery implementation - did you build it from scratch?

~~~
mattbell
That demo was shot like 12 months ago. I think we've changed the design/UI 3
times since then. It's silly, I know. I'm coming to realize that I'm
sabotaging my own startup with my fears of launching.

The gallery implementation we built ourselves... That's something we sure
spent a lot of time on. In hindsight, it could have been built after seeing
how many people use that feature and if it is needed or not. Thanks for the
feedback, cheers!

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dennisgorelik
Launch: 1) You would get feedback from users. 2) You would get motivation from
users to develop new features. 3) You would get the sense of accomplishment.
4) You would get running production web site experience.

If you get no feedback at all (which is a bad sign) -- it's still good for you
-- move on to the next idea.

~~~
mattbell
Motivation sure is tougher to come by when my co-founder and I have been on
this for 13 months full-time pulling 12+ hours a day on this. Even if I had
only 5 users I think it would motivate me like nothing else. Thanks for the
feedback, cheers!

------
babobear
I just took at look at your demo and I think it's a really cool idea, and you
have a clean, attractive UI. It seems pretty different from Blippy or Swipely
though actually - more focused on products rather than an individual's
transactions.

Go for it and just launch! I would love to use it.

------
rbanffy
I think the key is to either succeed or fail fast and cheap. In order to do
that, you should launch early.

~~~
mattbell
I came across this idea of if you have to fail, fail fast and early. If our
thing doesn't fly I will have learned this the hard way for sure. Thanks for
the feedback, cheers!

------
LeBlanc
What matters more than whether you are happy or not is whether your users are
happy or not. One thing you could try is to launch to a select number of users
(generally friends and family) and get their feedback before launching to the
general public.

~~~
dennisgorelik
No need to intentionally restrict users. Simply promote your web site to your
closest friends first and later focus on promoting it to broader audience.

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coryl
I certainly hope the video demo posted 10 months ago is FAR from what you're
doing now: <http://vimeo.com/6340992>

~~~
mattbell
It is! Is that good or bad? I don't know. I guess I need to launch it to find
out. Thanks for the feedback, cheers!

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fezzl
I actually like the idea very much. You should launch already!

~~~
mattbell
Hey thanks! I think we will have something up for the Hacker News peeps to
play around with and get that important feedback we crave. Thanks for the
feedback, cheers!

------
herdrick
Launch.

------
one010101
Keep going! You can't sell something you don't believe in! But don't try to
make the v2.0 version before launching. Make sure v1 is something your
identified customers will want and shove it out the door.

~~~
mattbell
I think you're right about selling something you don't believe in and/or want
to use. In retrospect, I don't think that's the case with our product - but
rather me not being able to build it to my expectations. What I realize now is
that it's something I can iterate on to get to market fit (and my expectations
fit). Thanks for the feedback, cheers!

