

Launch Your Site Too Soon - emilepetrone
http://housefed.tumblr.com/post/6460403580/launch-your-site-too-soon

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rgbrgb
I guess the counterargument is that if you had launched a really polished
site, you may have gotten positive press from the get-go and a much larger
userbase.

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emilepetrone
That is definitely a fair argument. The part I left out was in the last 11
months, I taught myself how to code and this was my biggest launch to date- so
it was a bit of trial by fire. Had I known what I know now, many of these bugs
would have definitely been corrected prior to the HN post. Riffing off an old
Rumsfeld quote, "You launch with the skills you have..."

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makthrow
You should look into buying "housefeed.com" and perhaps renaming your site to
that.

That's what I thought I saw as your name upon first glance. My brain
unconsciously filled in the details: "Oh, feeding people at a house,
'housefeed.com', makes sense".

Also, you get the benefit of the "feed" connotation: a feed of pictures of
people's meals at their houses.

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lazyjeff
As a second opinion, I had never thought of housefeed when thinking about
housefed. Housefed is like grassfed, and I would never think of grassfeed.

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doctororange
Good on you for being gutsy enough to launch to the HN crowd so early! Great
openness in your post.

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ojilles
I would love for this to succeed. However, for now, one can't book or host a
meal yet -- correct?

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ojilles
Btw, noticed you can like your own pictures. Not a biggy, but probably not
what you were looking for.

Also, why shouldn't I be able to upload multiple pictures for one meal?

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emilepetrone
Yes you can like your own photos. It may be something I stop now but early on
it wasn't a big deal.

And so far no one has requested that feature. It is a good idea though

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PonyGumbo
It's like throwing a dinner party and inviting the guests to come see how
you've neatly arranged the pots and pans on the floor, in the fashion of a
stove. "It's fantastic," they'll say, "Perhaps you should include some
carrots." "This is wonderful feedback!", you'll think, as you as begin to
slice carrots for your floor-bound pots.

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lionhearted
A witty quip, but probably wrong. The author's conclusion was important:

> Launch your [site] before you core functionality is done. You’ll fix the
> bugs you don’t know you have.

Some places can't afford to do that - things where lives are at stake
(medical, engineering, etc) or companies who don't get a chance at do-overs at
all.

But for most small ventures, you're in for a much bigger risk of abandoning
the project by delaying endlessly than you are of having a huge rush of
potential users, not being able to serve them, being unable to fix that, and
having a reputation for that stick.

And most people building medical devices, engineering, or rolling something
out for a huge corporation with a lot of buzz know who they are. The post is
good advice for the rest of everyone else.

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PonyGumbo
There's an enormous difference between launching before a site is polished,
and launching before the site is actually functional. You launch with a
minimum viable product. If your car doesn't have wheels or an engine, it's not
a viable product.

Show it to people early and often, get as much feedback as possible. Launch
when it works.

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rokhayakebe
Changing the background color to FFFFFF instantly gives the site a cleaner
look. I want to see this succeed.

~~~
emilepetrone
Thanks! Question on the #fff- would you keep the border around the photos
white too? It seems like too much white to me. What does everyone else think?

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brianmwang
You can always make the photo border a subtle off-white like #FAFAFA.

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newchimedes
I've heard a few different pitches for this idea...booking meals in other
people's homes...the one thing I rarely hear being brought up though is the
legality of this. Aren't there pretty strict laws about cooking prepared food
for others? I thought restaurants and even those street vendors are supposed
to be checked out...

Just wondering if you have checked this potential issue out...or maybe I'm
misunderstanding the idea.

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jrockway
It's serving the food that's illegal, not making a website saying someone is
willing to serve you food that's illegal. It's similar to AirBNB. Probably
illegal to rent out your apartment for a few days. Your landlord doesn't want
you to do it, your local hotel lobby doesn't want you to do it... and people
do it anyway. Making a list of people willing to break the law isn't illegal.
Same goes for Ubercab. Highly illegal or whatever, but still a great (and
disruptive) business idea.

The Internet is allowing people to break the law in harmless ways more than
we've ever been able to. And that's a good thing, because it means
protectionism is going away. Businesses will have to compete based on the
quality of their product, not based on how many lawmakers are in their pocket.
The Internet is finally returning the power to the people.

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johnx123
Would work only if you're a regular in HN. For anyone else, this would fire
(no one will return).

