

Launch Early, Launch Simple, and Test - KMinshew
http://blogs.wsj.com/accelerators/2012/12/06/launch-early-launch-simple-and-test/

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chewxy
It's one thing to launch early, simple and test. It's a whole other issue with
discovery.

Sure, it's easy to launch a webapp as your startup. But how will your first
customers or users discover you?

A lot has been said about launching early or simple or lean. Not enough
however, has been said about earliest discovery. It's sure easy to launch a
startup to test when you have thousands of followers already. It's a whole
other issue when you don't have any followers (not only on twitter, but
everywhere on the internet.. the sum total of your audience)

~~~
bryanh
We wrote [1] really briefly on that exact problem, which was one we faced. I'd
like to expand on this, because I think you are 100% right. Launching is only
half the battle.

[1] [https://zapier.com/blog/2012/04/05/finding-early-
customers-w...](https://zapier.com/blog/2012/04/05/finding-early-customers-
when-you-arent-internet-famous/)

~~~
joonix
Thanks, already integrated a few of your recommendations in my site.

Can anyone recommend a good landing page generator for someone who isn't a
front end developer? A site where I can quickly generate high quality landing
pages. My attempts to find a (free) service in the past were surprisingly
futile: I figured there'd be a ton of them out there for the internet
marketing crowd.

~~~
WadeF
Unbounce (<http://unbounce.com/>) is about as good as they come.

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orthecreedence
This is fine if you don't know the market.

If you know the market is dying for your product, take your time and build it
right the first time. Maybe someone else will get to Techcrunch faster
(boohoo), but when they're doing their 3rd rewrite, you'll be sailing towards
millions in golden doubloons on your beautifully crafted ship, laughing
maniacally all the way.

~~~
fertel
Your product will probably still suck. But launching early and getting
feedback from stakeholders will help you craft the product into something that
doesn't.

~~~
adamnemecek
"I would serve this as a challenge for the Lean Startup community. Especially
the ones with the really audacious goals. Sometimes they start audacious
because otherwise the product will never get to market. The Macintosh, that
product had to exist in its entirety for people to wrap their heads around
it,” he said, pointing to modern entrepreneurs like Elon Musk’s ventures as
ones that can’t be done on a small scale at first. "You got to get the rocket
into space."

[http://gigaom.com/2012/12/03/marc-andreessen-not-every-
start...](http://gigaom.com/2012/12/03/marc-andreessen-not-every-startup-
should-be-a-lean-startup-or-embrace-the-pivot/)

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bcasey
Why is this advice so damn hard to follow? I guess it's our ego that stops us
from launching before we have something that's fully polished. Or worse, our
ego that stops us from ever putting something out in the wild just because it
isn't perfect. I guess it's best just to follow the advice of Reid Hoffman,
"If your not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you've launched
too late." It certainly worked for him...

If it's our ego that stops us, maybe we just need a little assurance that a
failure isn't the end of the world. So, has anyone ever been really burned by
putting out something that wasn't ready-for primetime?

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hoi
Congrats! However, one thing that these type of articles don't report on is
when it doesn't work or not quite as plain sailing. The 'success stories' are
rare hence why they make better stories. An article I would like to see would
be a compare and contrast, 2 similar products using similar 'lean' strategies,
one is successful, and one is not. The compare and contrast narrative would be
great for learning.

~~~
bmelton
This advice could probably go without saying, but if your startup is solving a
problem, or saving someone time or money, then you definitely don't need bells
and whistles to validate the need.

If you can distill your idea to its kernel of truth and launch that, and don't
get customers, that's either a big marketing problem, or the market saying it
doesn't need your solution. Adding in 'social features', or a more dynamic
interface likely won't solve the problem that the product isn't useful to the
people who should need it.

At that point, generally, it's a matter of either pivoting the idea into a
utile state or moving onto the next idea altogether, and isn't worth fluffing
up until you've reached a point of utility enough that at least some people
are willing to pay for it.

If, on the other hand, you can get somebody's wallet open, then you should be
able to scale it up. If there's one person whose problem you are solving, then
there are almost certainly more that you can reach. At that point, it's worth
running the idea down as far as you can, but at least you're making some money
in the process.

~~~
ErikAugust
"If you can distill your idea to its kernel of truth and launch that, and
don't get customers, that's either a big marketing problem, or the market
saying it doesn't need your solution." Right.

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stevecov2708
Great article, it is definitely the approach that makes sense for most start
ups, people can spend time developing and then not meet the problem they were
trying to solve.

The tough part is getting users to be a part of that feedback loop, but as
others have said it helps you answer that "how do I get users" much quicker.

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jzd131
I think it is different when you are selling to enterprises, they will only be
so forgiving. What do you think?

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rbn
Lean Launch works for only products that have customers ready to use it.

Other cases when your ready to blast 1k emails, your site better be complete
or people will visit once and never visit again.

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neya
This is an article targeted to get more signups for Mixpanel and CrazyEgg more
than anything else. I've seen much much better articles with depth on the same
topic.

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josh33
Be aware that you will burn some customers and lose them. Customer feedback is
a scarce resource that you can burn up before converting it to an asset.

