
Aaron Swartz: How To Launch Software - mqt
http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/howtolaunch
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mojombo
I find this to be excellent advice. This is exactly the approach we took at
GitHub almost down to the letter. It took about 2 months until the site was
good enough to use to host the GitHub source, another month until we started
private beta with invites, and three more months until public launch.

Artificial scarcity is a great technique to generate excitement for a product
while also limiting growth to a rate that won't melt your servers. We worked
through a huge number of problems and early users gave us some of the ideas
that have defined GitHub. By doing a Hollywood launch, things would have been
very different and I am convinced, very much worse.

Do not, I repeat, DO NOT underestimate how much your users will help you to
define your product. If you launch without having significant user feedback
time, you've essentially thrown away a massive (and free) focus group study.

Let me also say that when we finally did our public launch, there was plenty
of buzz, and all of it was the RIGHT kind of buzz. The buzz that attracts
real, lasting customers (and no, we weren't on TechCrunch, that traffic is
garbage).

~~~
axod
Completely agree. There is just so much value to be gained from early users
suggestions, and going through a few iterations.

Those early users are amazingly important. The overly passionate verging on
stalker types that IM you asking if you just changed the color of a link and
then tell you exactly what they think about it.

It was a similar story with Mibbit, although I didn't bother with beta, just
threw the site up there and started iterating. The growth isn't quite a hockey
stick, but it's extremely consistent which means I can grow the product along
with the userbase.

Also I agree about techcrunch type traffic. Early on with Mibbit it got to the
top on proggit. It was sort of fun, got a reasonable number of people in that
night who looked around, said this is cool, then went... never to be seen
again. Next day it was pretty dead. I think that's pretty typical.

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tptacek
37Signals has launched four (4) commercial products, and takes in (by my
guess, from headcount and subscription numbers) mid-high 7 figures from them.

Aaron Swartz has launched, by my count, _no_ successful products (unless I'm
wrong and Reddit wasn't already a success story when he got there).

From Aaron's own web page, here's what I get when I click on his "my day job"
link:

<http://www.flickr.com/photos/29804691@N02/2786744327/>

Why am I being such a dick about this? Because the argument he's making is
disingenuous. Aaron advocates for an extended friends-and-family beta before
launch. Aaron has no idea what 37signals does to beta and dogfood their
product before the "Hollywood Launch". From what I can tell, everything
37signals does happens just before "step 5" in his master plan.

The difference between 37signals and Aaron Swartz isn't methodology.
Methodology is a band-aid. The difference between Aaron Swartz and 37signals
is _ability to execute_.

Here's a much better writeup from a much more credible source on the same
topic:

<http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/PickingShipDate.html>

~~~
spolsky
When you're finished with the ad hominem part of your attack, I'd just like to
weigh in and say that Aaron got this exactly right.

~~~
tptacek
Aaron advocates avoiding the "Hollywood Launch", marketing your product only
after you've verified that "random people" are satisfied with the offering.

I'm asking you: are you saying that after Fog Creek spends 9 months building
and testing a product, dogfooding it with internal users, and running closed
beta testing, that you would _avoid publicity_ for it until random paying
customers started liking it?

Because I feel like I remember you making _an actual movie_ about the last
product you launched.

~~~
spolsky
again, with the ad hominems!

~~~
shiranaihito
Looked more like a question to me.

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jimgreer
We actually did the same thing for Kongregate. Except we gave out an invite
code to everyone who asked - usually same day. So the artificial scarcity
was... artificial. But if we'd had a big problem we could have stopped the
invites.

We did that for about two months and then took the invite barrier down. Worked
for us.

edit: I forgot the second half of this story. A few months after we took the
invite barrier down, we decided to do a "Hollywood" launch - really all we
were doing was changing the "alpha" to "beta" and releasing some new features
(earning cards by playing games). It worked, we got lots of press. Fox News
even called and asked if I could go on their afternoon cable show. I did
(here's the video - <http://tinyurl.com/2gpz7x>). Our site immediately
cratered - it was a much, much bigger surge than Digg. We got it back up in
about 20 minutes and the follow on traffic was good as well.

So I guess we did a hybrid Gmail/Hollywood.

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ComputerGuru
Can people _please_ stop using "software" and "webapp" interchangeably?

I realize most members here are founders of startups that deal with webapps,
but there _are_ some startups that deal with traditional desktop applications
- true "software," who share similar interests.

That said - I wonder which of these two approaches is better for desktop
software development. I'd imagine the fact that a user has installed your
software is a "hook" of sorts - they're easier to reel in than website
visitors which can escape rather more easily.

~~~
ComputerGuru
-3? Looks like I'm the only desktop developer here then. My bad.

~~~
SwellJoe
_Looks like I'm the only desktop developer here then._

I'm sure it's because you imply that the only installable software is on the
desktop. You insensitive clod. (I'm kidding, of course, but I also build non-
web-apps and also found this advice only marginally useful, though I do find
that having users from very early in the process is vital.)

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run4yourlives
The big elephant in the room that nobody here seems to be taking into
consideration: 37Signals charges their users to use their product.

The Hollywood launch allows for such a case, whereas this example makes that
much more difficult. Do you force beta users to pay? Do they pay the same
amount as others? Etc etc.

Hollywood launches allow you to broadcast a product as "finished". The issues
Aaron cites seem to arise from broadcasting the "finished" announcement when
the product is clearly not in that state.

~~~
hbien
I think GitHub did a free beta launch, followed by a few iterations with
feedback, and then they started charging users.

That's reasonable for beta users, especially if they get a discount for their
feedback.

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axod
Can you guess which method cuil chose. If you remember what cuil is of course.

Perhaps they should have read this first.

~~~
alaskamiller
Cuil, the company that announced it was beta 10 months prior, refined its
crawler multiple times when people start complaining, and the one that did the
traditional massive PR push a couple weeks back but failed because their
marketing team are just inept?

That one?

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ivankirigin
But does the Hollywood launch hurt? It seems like the reasonable way to go is
to get a big bump when you open doors, iterate using the feedback of people
that stay, and get more coverage whenever you release a big new feature set.

Certain sites don't really make sense with invite codes too.

~~~
tstegart
You're right. I think web apps get a huge benefit from soft launches, beta
testing and user feedback. Its just invaluable information to have before you
really present yourself.

On the other hand, if you're launching the next ValleyWag site, the Hollywood
launch might be the way to go.

------
yan
I think it boils down to how comfortable you are with your product.

If your stuff feels iffy and has less-than-ideal engineering practices, the
slow and steady launch might work great. Expose enough of your idea to keep
people idling around and begin free beta testing.

This isn't bad, per se. Everything is a trade off, and if engineering skill or
time is not something you have an excess of, the slow and gradual launch can
work.

On the other hand, if you have experience building and scaling and are
confident that: a) the core of your idea is apparent in your product, and b)
you did enough testing that things won't break on launch, by all means, build
the hype and open the flood gates on launch day.

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fleaflicker
One of Fleaflicker's biggest advantages was having a smaller userbase than
other sites.

This meant I could mess up in spectacular fashion and still fix things before
anybody noticed. "Fixing things" involved computationally intensive tasks and
the bigger sites just couldn't do that quickly.

[http://sports.espn.go.com/fantasy/baseball/flb/story?id=2832...](http://sports.espn.go.com/fantasy/baseball/flb/story?id=2832928)

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profgubler
I think that both can work. It depends on the goals of the company and type of
software they are launching. I do think that gmail is a terrible example
though. Google can launch anything, slowly or Hollywood style and it will get
attention.Granted not everything they do succeeds, but Google has an advantage
with any new product launches. A better example might be the original launch
of Google.

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shinvee
I think both of them are important.

