

Ask HN: Not Ready.  Now what? - bmelton

To make a very long story as short as I can, we were targeting November 'launch an app' month to get Plum out the door, but it looks like if we really really push for that, we'll be pushing out some crap.<p>What we have is great.  Awe-inspiring.  The tech behind Plum is amazing.  But, it's still another few days off, at least, and we're boostrapping it on nights and weekends.<p>What would you do, if you were about to potentially miss a deadline?  Ship anyway?  Ship in a very limited beta?  Just let the deadline slip quietly and release as soon as we're comfortable?  Something else?
======
aeontech
Don't ship something that's not ready. If you have a subset of the product
that makes sense to release, release it, but most likely releasing a subset
that's not designed to be used standalone will leave you with a product that
has some glaring holes and inconsistencies.

If it's going to have bugs, frustrate customers, or worse yet, lose their
data, sit tight and polish it until it's ready. If people are waiting for it,
send them a clear update saying that you know that they are waiting, that you
are working on the final updates, and that you expect it to be ready at such
and such date. Your customers will appreciate the transparency, and won't mind
waiting a bit longer if it means they get a product that's a joy to use.

This doesn't apply if the customers are waiting for a beta release - in that
case, go ahead and release, just make sure to remind them that the product is
in beta, and therefore bugs are to be expected.

------
sutro
So what you have is already "great," "awe-inspiring," and "amazing" yet if you
ship it now instead of a few days from now it will somehow be "crap?"

I doubt that what you have is crap. I also doubt that what you have inspires
awe. You're putting too much pressure on this "launch." It's just the first of
hopefully many public or semi-public iterations. No one is going to care
anywhere near as much as you do about this. Just get it out there, consider it
a success if you pick up a few early adopters, and iterate.

~~~
bmelton
The tech is awesome. A lot of what the user can't see is just plain sweet.
This is mostly leveraging a lot of other people's elegant tools (CeleryQ,
RabbitMQ, Mongo, etc.)

The front end is missing a lot of obvious pieces which have placeholders. It
looks like Franken-App (or Franke-App's monster, if you prefer).

You're 100% right, to be sure. Nobody else will care the way that we do, but I
know that I personally find it hard to revisit something later if it's really
bad at first.

------
willheim
I'm in the same position you are in... except was hoping to get word out and
invites out at an event on the 1st. Just going to have to bite the bullet and
let it slip. The tech is good but still has bugs. Not every hole has been
plugged. Forgetting that code hasn't been optimized and speed is suffering, I
just don't feel comfortable releasing a private beta yet. Next BIG launch
target is in January and I'll open up an extremely limited private
alpha/guinea pig site in the meantime.

I'm of the opinion that it doesn't mater how many (or how few) features you
have, or even if what you have works, but what is paramount is that the UX is
perfect. Not a single thing can be wrong with what you release. Anything that
is will just scare away potential customers and give yoyu a rep for building
crap.

~~~
bmelton
I put up a landing page, which probably hasn't generated any buzz, but has
allowed me to capture a very healthy amount of emails.

I don't necessarily share your 'perfect or nothing' mindset for launch, but
there are a lot of features that we're looking to throw out for launch, and
can safely push back to a later date.

Most of what I'm calling 'crap' is just incomplete though, and some of these
things can be pulled together quickly... others, not so much.

Good luck on yours as well. I look forward to seeing it.

------
user24
I'm in the same boat, ish. My problem is that I haven't put as much effort
into my november project as I'd like. On the plus side I've learned loads:

Why being a single founder is hard (2 people means you both have to be
demotivated in order to fail, which is twice as unlikely as just one person)

Why audience is more important than product (I've still not written a line of
code, but I'm getting relevant traffic to my "product"'s homepage through some
blog posts. I see a half-popular website as more valuable than a half-written
app)

That these things are _hard_ to keep focused on. I've not worked on my project
for about a week and a half and that's put a huge dent in my deadline-hitting
ability.

And a load of other stuff which I'll probably blog about this week.

------
iworkforthem
As long as you have one core feature ready, I think you should launch it! I
really doubt anybody else care that much about the product other than
yourself. Launch it! If it is good, feedback will start coming in.

------
xtrycatchx
a half baked cake is not delicious. might as well finished it fully before
shipping it..

------
lovelyLaney
take the middle road. Jumping to launch a broken product isn't good, but
waiting for perfecting isn't either. If it is workable, you hit a minimum
feature set or anything, launch!

Also, do you get a prize for launching in Nov?

<3

