

The importance of launching early and staying alive - drusenko
http://david.weebly.com/1/post/2008/02/the-importance-of-launching-early-and-staying-alive.html

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samwise
It's important to note that eventhough you should launch early, your product
should work well and have a real benefit. too often i see startups launchs
with a half-baked idea.

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drusenko
"Don't launch with a crappy product -- launch as soon as what you have is
better than what is out there." If I remember correctly, that is advice given
by Paul Buchheit.

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eusman
it doesn't matter who gave the advice, if you can't realise it on your own.
And you usually do, without needing someone to tell you.

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drusenko
hang out with PB for 10 minutes and you'll hear 10 things that make you say
"aha". you've got to be humble enough to realize that you don't know
everything, and you won't necessarily stumble upon every realization on your
own.

~~~
eusman
you missed my point

e.g. Hearing someone talking about fear is entirelly different from living it
on your own.

The same goes for many stages in a startup. If you don't experience it, any
advice in the world will not matter.

I wouldn't be here if I thought I knew everything, but If you/I expect someone
else to tell you how to understand if your product is ready then you lost
already.

For example if you want me to be more precise.

In the certain advice everything is obselete and relative.

What is the competition? Have they already launched? How easy will be for them
to just replicate you and crush you? When do you know you are better from the
competition? What would make sure you will avoid crushing you?

All these questions relative to that advice are so crucial that makes the
advice broad enough unless you are already experiencing that pressure and
already have the realization of the market you are trying to enter etc.

Thats why advices are meaningless until you experience them.

You need to value the essence of the advice, not always upon who gives it.

You will get many good advices from many people if you don't undervalue them.

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drusenko
i'm still a bit confused by your point, but advice has been very helpful for
us. generally, the person giving advice tries to formulate their advice in
such a way that it applies to more than just one situation. advice seems to be
most useful when it applies directly to a situation you're currently dealing
with. but maybe i'm missing your point entirely.

~~~
eusman
that was exactly my point, the advice was valuable because it was applicable
relative to what you are experiencing.

the advice is not as important by who is said, as much if the person giving it
is identifying what to tell you relative to your current experience. Otherwise
any other advice will not matter.

~~~
drusenko
very true, but it does matter who gives the advice: some people give bad
advice that sounds good on the surface, but isn't. you always need to follow
your gut, and listen to all advice no matter who gives it, but we always
listen especially carefully to people who have dealt with our situation and
been successful.

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brlewis
Any arguments for/against the following?

Quote: the "build it and they will come" mentality is a fallacy. You need to
build something great and have distribution in order to succeed. And
distribution is hard to get.

~~~
mixmax
I've tried and it's true.

I built a great social networking website, but there were problems with just
about everything (including a programmer that had a nervous breakdown and
quit, one that had a heart attack and quit, one that got pregnant and quit, a
change in the law that made our business model obsolete, etc. etc) We launched
just for the hell of it, but didn't follow through on it. I think there are
around 50 users now...

~~~
sutro
Upmodded for unintentional hilariousness. Are you sure a plague of locusts
didn't also descend upon your programmers? Note to self: never accept a
programming job from mixmax.

~~~
mixmax
he he, I'm the devil :-)

but no, none of it had anything to do with me - it was all external and not
related to the startup at all. Just seriously bad luck...

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dualogy
No offense, but personally I think this is the one sentence a person in charge
should never permit him/herself to utter... :)

On the other hand, bad luck happens.

~~~
mixmax
None taken.

But I do find that humor goes a long way in management. In the above example
it was the only way of dealing with it.

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tim2
This article is about the importance of getting a rediculous number of major
publicity hits, not so much launching early.

Those graphs don't even measure if the product was good -- people often don't
find out how good something is until _after_ they sign up for it.

~~~
drusenko
exactly right. good publicity and a bad product wouldn't help anything. and if
you notice the "new users per day" graph, it settles higher after every
publicity hit -- which is a good indication that your product is of value,
since the more people that know about you, the more that tell other people
about you, the more sign-up for your product every day.

and on a side note, it's also much harder to get good publicity for a bad
product.

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wastedbrains
Good and timely advice. We have been launched for 6 weeks or so, and seeing
our growth grow slower than we would have liked. It is good to know other
start ups that are doing well, had a pretty slow intial growth for awhile. I
guess that means it is time to put a bit more effort into PR and engineering
some viral features.

