

Don’t Launch Your Product - kevingibbon
http://philosophically.com/dont-launch-your-product

======
mbrock
I've been thinking lately, don't make "products" at all.

It's like "building a city." Whenever someone tries, it's a disaster. It's
artificial, it's authoritarian, it's clumsy.

What to do instead? I don't know. Solve a problem for someone. Build a place
for your friends. Make a tool. Make a script. Make a meme. Start a club. Build
a boat.

I'm more and more interested in the anthropological viewpoint. Looking at us
as, well, a human culture. People in Papua New Guinea build boats and tools.
And here we are building "products."

pg's saying this but from a more capitalist viewpoint: that successful
startups start as solutions to problems, that the best ideas come from your
own problems, and so on.

I think that if we bracket out the question of making money, it's still
interesting to think about. What is a "product?" Is it different from other
created things?

~~~
skrebbel
> _It's like "building a city." Whenever someone tries, it's a disaster._

Not always! <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmeloord>

The trick is to not aim too high.

~~~
ohwp
_"The trick is to not aim too high."_

Like the "Blauwestad" which failed.
<http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blauwestad_(project)> (Dutch)

~~~
skrebbel
Eh, was there _any_ modesty in that project at all? I think that, in startup
terms, Blauwestad is an excellent example of the "if you build it, then they
will come" attitude. The real estate version of Color.

EDIT: Oh wait, that's exactly what you meant.

------
dmor
You might be surprised how difficult it is to get press for anything outside
of company launch, product launch, funding and exit events. It would seem this
blog post, although you might not have expected it to do this well on Hacker
News, is effectively a launch of sorts and you might have scooped your own
story. But HN readers might be much better customers for a tech-friendly
family site than TC readers.

But then I went on TechCrunch to read your original launch post I saw you
actually did announce Origami on TechCrunch about 6 months ago:
<http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/20/everyme-origami/>

I'm confused, how does this fit with "what I recommend – and what we’re doing
at Origami - is not launching at all"?

~~~
austenallred
Did you read the article? He was saying "We launched, but it wasn't worth it;
we probably shouldn't have."

~~~
dmor
I think he was referring to Everyme's launch, they also launched Origami
(though perhaps not on purpose, it was an announced pivot)

------
mindcrime
You guys were YC11 and nobody suggested that you read _The Four Steps to the
Epiphany_??? Seriously, half the readers of HN could tell you that you don't
do a big PR launch _before_ establishing product/market fit. Are you _trying_
to be Webvan 2.0?

Sorry, don't mean to sound harsh, but that just seems so weird to think that
anybody would make that mistake in this day and age. This lesson has been
learned and shared and reshared and written about and blogged about and
discussed to death.

Nonetheless, you guys did a lot of hard work and it sucks to have things not
go well. Sorry to hear, and I hope things improve down the road.

Edit: Sorry of this came off as overly harsh. I'm not _trying_ to be mean-
spirited here. I'm just a little surprised by the details of the story, given
the context. And I don't mean to suggest that I'm better than anybody or know
better, etc. I'm just some nobody who haven't proven anything yet, so feel
free to ignore me.

~~~
tarr11
This is such a classic HN reply to a failed launch, I feel like it needs to be
an option on the menu bar to save us all time.

link | parent | flag | you-suck-but-good-luck

~~~
michaelkscott
Don't you think people should accept both positive and negetive feedback.

~~~
incawater
Yes, You are right.

------
lubujackson
It's a nice idea, ESPECIALLY for social sites that focus on community. There's
a lot of knobs that need to be tweaked to communicate the message and identify
the true audience. But be aware what you give up when you sacrifice the big
launch - a lot of nice links, some press, and a lot of tech people giving you
a sniff.

If you think about it, the "big launch" is at direct odds with the lean
startup approach.

------
mbesto
> _Take the word launch out of your vocabulary – it’s a sign that you are
> gambling on your app and not building a long-term, sustainable company._

From Steve Blank > _Your startup is essentially an organization built to
search for a repeatable and scalable business model._ [1]

I don't think taking the word launch out of your dictionary is necessary. I
prefer to use the word ship anyway. Also, who cares if it's a sign you're
gambling? Everyone know's you're gambling by doing a startup. What you're
talking about is running a marketing/pr campaign. And yes I whole heartedly
agree - do not spend money/time on marketing/pr until you have a
product/market fit. What they've effectively done is increase their churn and
customer acquisition costs. Marketing does not work unless there is actually a
market to be served.

> _Instead, put your sign-up page up or your app out because you need more
> feedback on your idea. Find an audience of passionate users, even if small,
> and reach out to their community through appropriate means._

This is the only thing web startups need to know.

I launched Compete Hub about 6 weeks ago. I knew it the site isn't perfect,
and even though I only have about 20-30 users I do have something possibly
very little startups have - passionate users. For example:

1\. I belong to a triathlon club full of people who are testing everything out
and giving me feedback.

2\. I have a follow up meeting with this person:
<https://twitter.com/competehub/status/313658484245803009>

3\. After writing a blog post about my plans, I had someone provide
feedback.[3] I have a call with this guy in a few days to speak with him in
person.

4\. I had a sign-up page before we launched that basically said "Are you
interested in a website that helps you triathlons? Put you're email here:" I
got 60 email addresses from that.

I have a comprehensive marketing plan (that can hit a massive reach for fairly
cheap), but I will not unleash it unless I've proven with my early evangelists
that there is a market for this type of thing.

TL;DR - The purpose of the MVP is to engage discussions. The purpose of
engaging discussions is finding a product-market fit. The purpose of product-
market fit is to build a repeatable and scalable business model.

[1][http://steveblank.com/2010/01/25/whats-a-startup-first-
princ...](http://steveblank.com/2010/01/25/whats-a-startup-first-principles/)

[2]<https://www.competehub.com/>

[3][http://blog.competehub.com/2013/04/10/endurance-race-
discove...](http://blog.competehub.com/2013/04/10/endurance-race-discovery-is-
broken-heres-how-were-fixing-it/)

------
johnrob
That was a valuable story to read. While there is plenty written about
establishing product market fit before chasing the press, it's definitely
worth wresting the "launch" out of our playbook. There are quite a few
misguided habits subtly embedded in that ritual.

There are quite a few startup 1-liners out there today and it's worth
mentioning one from Marc Andreessen: _Be so good they can't ignore you_.
Applied to the OP, let the press find you when once you have something
interesting.

------
benjamincburns
tl;dr - Don't let your hopes get out of control.

> We [snip] ended up with 11,000 downloads and 6000 sign-ups for our first
> day. Not exactly the day we expected.

It's hard to have sympathy for this. Admittedly they had lots of resources put
behind them leading up to their big launch, but convincing 6,000 people to
convert on day one of product availability isn't something to scoff at. What
am I missing here?

~~~
6d0debc071
By the sound of it, they didn't convince 6k to convert, they convinced 6k to
have a look.

"“Launching” screws with your metrics – and you need clean metrics to evaluate
and iterate on your business. If you see 6000 signups on day one and 2000 on
day two, you can be mislead about the strength of your vision. It clouds your
ability to single out the passionate users and understand their usage
patterns."

[...]

"You can demonstrate growth by finding one passionate user, and then ten, and
then 100 instead of taking in 6000 sign-ups to find 111 passionate ones."

That was the main thing I got from it anyway. They launched and missed and
then... :/

I do feel kinda bad for them.

~~~
benjamincburns
Yeah, I should've used a different word; I considered making an edit. I feel
bad for them as well, but more out of sympathy for the experience of having
the wind taken out of your sails.

I don't necessarily agree that it's bad data either, just that it needs to be
weighted appropriately. He's right though that it would be better to have
gained this knowledge slowly instead of as one big bang. That would give them
more chances to course correct without so much external attention.

------
colinplamondon
I don't see it making much of a difference- if you've proven out your product
in a reasonable private beta, your public numbers shouldn't be surprising. You
go live, you see a big spike, then after a week your metrics go back to
normal. No harm, no foul.

It sounds like they're going about it in a great way with Origami, and, once
they have their numbers in good shape, if they were to launch publicly there'd
be no downside. That they weren't able to eclipse their launch numbers (5k-ish
downloads is normal for a standard TC launch) within a month is just a way of
showing that they didn't have a grip on their growth before launching to the
App Store.

As a note, there's a slew of reasons not to launch a "beta" app on the App
Store- not least of which is that "New and Noteworthy" is really only for
"New" apps and "Noteworthy" huge updates. You totally shoot yourself in the
foot by taking yourself out of the running for the former.

------
akrymski
A press mention always leads to a spike in traffic / sign-ups. This shouldn't
be surprising. I was one of those people who tried EveryMe when it came out. I
simply didn't see what problem it was solving. It was overhyped and not very
useful imo. I'm afraid you're repeating the same mistake with Origami.

But a launch is nothing more than a free way to get some traffic. Sure it
doesn't guarantee conversions, but you'd be foolish to avoid free marketing
for your startup. Instagram’s app reached 1 million downloads in less than 24
hours (and 5 million downloads in just six days). Apple's iPhone launch went
pretty well too. Don't blame the press for lack of market fit.

Edit: you've made things harder on yourself by trying to invent a new product
category. The iPhone was a better phone. Instagram was better than Facebook at
photo-sharing. Are you sure the world needs a social network for families? If
you ask people (especially investors) nobody will say its a crap idea because
then you're viewed as the guy who doesn't want to share photos with his
family. Well I don't. And neither do the girls on Instagram that have
thousands of followers.

I've seen a few failed attempts at vertical social networks (soc nets for
pets, families, etc) and none have been successful at establishing a new
product category. Perhaps it's like "email for families" - there's no point
for a completely new identity. Social networking is like email - its a set of
tools (photo-sharing, commenting, posts). Instagram improved one of those
tools. That's a functional approach. Trying to apply the same tools in a niche
just means "messaging for families" to me. I understand families is the
biggest use case of EveryMe probably, but WatsApp had the group messaging
feature like forever and I've only seen anyone ever use it once. Group
messaging never seemed to be a popular product category, and not one of the
top things to do on Facebook (unlike photo sharing) so it seems like the
market doesn't need a standalone app for that.

~~~
olivercameron
Note: I'm a co-founder of Everyme, but no longer with the company.

I'm not even sure where to start here, because your comment deviates wildly
from the actual point of the post. It borders on trollish.

 _"Are you sure the world needs a social network for families?"_

Actually, yes. After seeing behavior from hundreds of thousands of Everyme
users, and talking to tons of families the evidence seems to indicate that the
world does need it. Did I mention that 30,000 people signed up to be notified
when a "private social network for your family" launches? I'm not sure how
much more confident we could have been in the concept. We used all of the
available data to make the right call.

 _"Well I don't. And neither do the girls on Instagram that have thousands of
followers."_

You're entitled to your own opinion, but I am certain you don't speak for all
of these people.

 _"WatsApp had the group messaging feature like forever and I've only seen
anyone ever use it once"_

Anecdotal evidence, at best. WhatsApp has hundreds of millions of users, they
keep the feature around because people are using it.

 _"Group messaging never seemed to be a popular product category, and not one
of the top things to do on Facebook (unlike photo sharing) so it seems like
the market doesn't need a standalone app for that."_

Mark Zuckerberg recently said: "The big stuff that we’re seeing now is sharing
with smaller groups". When a founder who has data from 1 billion people says
that, you know it's true.

~~~
akrymski
Oliver, to me the post reads as "we've launched with lots of PR but failed to
get the traction we were hoping for, so don't bother with PR". It borders on
blaming the press for lack of market fit.

I'm not saying the world doesn't need a social network for families or a
social network for pets or whatever. I'm just saying I wouldn't use one, and
the people I know wouldn't use one, but I'm sure you've done your research and
there very well may be people that will. I sincerely wish you best of luck
with it. But if I were you I'd be listening to negative feedback just as much
as to positive feedback.

Frankly I'm just trying to help. I think EveryMe is a really nicely done app,
and I love the fact that you had the balls to do a big launch and get everyone
hyped up about the product. Launches are supposed to be big bets with high
risk and potentially high reward. I wouldn't want that to disappear. Just
because a product didn't resonate with consumers as much as you hoped it
would, it doesn't mean the idea of a big launch is bad. I wouldn't want Apple
to just release products without "launching" them. Facebook is a counter
example, but I think they would have succeeded if they had a big launch as
well, their product just didn't need it.

Personally I prefer the idea of EveryMe over Origami, so a bit sad to see you
change direction because the launch didn't go as planned. I think there are a
lot of iterative things you could still try with EveryMe (eg automatic
location based groups). Will be interesting to see what you can do in Origami
that you can't already do in EveryMe.

------
asperous
I don't know if the author realizes it, but he just "announced" his product
over his blog. He just launched it.

It's pretty common to wrap a product launch into your blog, Joel Sposky did it
with Trello (and continued to do it every post) and Jeff Atwood did it with
discourse.

~~~
achillean
I think what he was getting at is that you shouldn't overvalue the initial
launch of the product and trying to get it "perfect". It's a lot more
important to be persistent/ routine in promoting your product and then slowly
fine-tuning your software to what the target audience really cares about.

I had the same sort of realization for my own project (Shodan). Early on in
the project, I would try to figure out when the best times are to make
announcements, how posting to social sites should be staggered, what day of
the week it's best to post on Twitter etc. But it just sets you up for
unnecessary disappointment, and instead it's better imo to just constantly
release information. Occasionally, something will stick and you'll get the
burst of traffic/ attention that you were looking for originally.

~~~
pseut
Fortunately your project, you know, terrifies people.

edit: typo

------
damncabbage
_"Our plan was simple. Launch the app and generate enough buzz for 25-50,000
downloads ..."_

Is this ever a realistic goal?

~~~
juhq
Well, they did get between 25 and 50,000 signups, so goal achieved.

------
gfodor
The author makes good points but to me the launch is less about product
validation and more about kicking the tires on the infrastructure. It's all
noise and is relatively worthless (especially if you are getting feedback from
techies on a non-techie product) but you can certainly tighten the screws
after your system gets a real honest pounding.

~~~
chewxy
Occasionally it's actually good (re: techie feedback on non technie product).

We designed Fork the Cookbook[0] to be highly accessible by the common food
blogging mom. We went out to them, and they hated the idea of forking recipes
(very strange thing: our target market has this concept that "what's mine is
mine. nobody is allowed to steal it. forking a recipe is stealing")

On the other hand, we have had good responses from the techie people. That
makes for a bloody confusing audience pivot.

I guess in our case it's more of discovering the product market fit

[0] <http://forkthecookbook.com>

~~~
jat850
I am not sure if you have since pivoted, but here are 2 thoughts from a non-
technical perspective:

1) I think "fork the cookbook" is awesome for a tech target audience, maybe
not so much for a non-technical target audience. Forking has instant grok-
ability with tech people but outside of that vector it's not immediately
apparent.

2) Because of #1 (but I do think your core idea is close), what about
something wherein the concept isn't "forking" a recipe (i.e. taking an
existing one and mutating it) but rather, a "this is my take on that same
dish" type approach.

User 1 uploads a recipe for potato casserole. User 2 discovers this recipe and
has a slight twist on it, and rather than "forking" User 1's recipe, rather
directly posts their own recipe. But a linkage between the two is created
(where I guess the PK could be considered "potato casserole"), such that
future users looking for potato casseroles would stumble across both. Or, when
a user discovers User 1's version, the linkage could be represented as "Or,
try THIS variant". Incorporate rating/votings (presumably you already have
this).

It's probably extremely close to what you already have, but removes the tech
connotation and even though it is extremely philosophically close to your
original idea, make it removes the linkage in peoples' minds that anyone is
"stealing" their recipe.

~~~
chewxy
We're in the middle of a pivot to chase the tech savvy crowd.

Thanks for your advice. It's a good way to frame the value proposition

~~~
saraid216
There's a large subset of the tech savvy crowd who like food experimentation,
too.

~~~
chewxy
And we've also discovered: more willing to pay for a recipe repository that
allows export of data

------
loupeabody
The article itself certainly offers sound advice. I can imagine how
distracting a full blown launch can be when there's a business to build and a
product to refine.

Thing is, after clicking through to the author's new project, Origami[1], the
same big launch mentality seems to still be at play. I'm met with a mysterious
sign up page hinting at the product, but there's no way to be sure if I'm
genuinely interested. I submitted my email just to see if I could get my hands
on the product, putting my trust into the "early access now" message
underneath the email field. The resulting email just kept me at arm's length
and I still know nothing about the product.

I suppose that's the way it's meant to be, though, given that Origami "has a
thriving community of families in the hundreds already".

[1]<https://origami.com/>

~~~
csmattryder
I was looking for this comment, I'm expected to sign up for something I don't
even know I don't need!

I can hazard a guess that EveryMe (beyond being Yet Another Social Network) is
that it wasn't communicated properly, I'll back that up by:

"Our Twitter searches were full of users that didn't get it."

I've noticed this trend in recent startups, where for some funny reason, you
tell the consumer nothing about the product but expect them to pay a time and
information investment. My email address isn't something I just give out to
no-mark sites.

As one such consumer, you're battling with not only The Big Guys, but that
other startup that has an introduction stating their mission. You've got 10
seconds to convince me I need you, or I'm out of your website.

------
chewxy
This is probably one of the best advices I've read in recent weeks. It's
exactly why for Fork the Cookbook[0] we only ever soft-launched. No Show HNs,
no sending out messages to Techcrunch or whatever.

We've learned from our experience with Strangers for Dinner, and agree very
much with the author's sentiments that "“Launching” screws with your metrics –
and you need clean metrics to evaluate and iterate on your business."

Even for Fork the Cookbook, we're not there yet with Product/Market fit, and
our marketing activities have changed a lot since being set live to the public
at the end of Jan/beginning of Feb.

[0] <http://forkthecookbook.com> (can't resist spruiking now, can I?)

~~~
pseut
Dude, this is the second comment in this thread plugging your non-HN-launched
product. But don't worry, we all backslide from time to time. I know you can
do it! I know you can keep HN free of links to forkthewhatevs!

~~~
chewxy
It's actually the first. My other comment was added later. But yes, I agree
with you, I do overpromote at times

~~~
zizee
Don't take pseut's comments to heart. You're obviously excited about your
product, which no one should begrudge you. I think the HN audience is pretty
accepting of self promotion, as long as it is not too in your face.

Mind you, you have to admit, promoting your product on HN by saying "we
skipped doing a show HN" is a little ironic.

------
rythie
My thought is, that you'll most likely grow slowly like this at first - it
might speed up a lot if you're very lucky. However, I don't see the harm in
'launching' down the line (6 months/year) or re-launching when you've got
product/market fit.

For example, the people that made pebble had made other smart watches before,
Facebook was used for 2+ years in collages before it was 'launched' to
everyone. Mozilla spent 6 years developing it's plaform before it launched
Firefox (which was 99% the same code as Mozilla anyway).

I'm not saying have a closed/private-beta - just don't go out of your way to
call the press, until you have product/market fit.

------
robjama
I couldn't disagree with this more. It really depends on the product and
market!

IF you know people will want your product. OR are going after a mass market
with a better X OR need to get up the App Store charts (hit based apps)? THEN
aim for a huge hard-launch. A big product launch in this case is pretty much
mandatory.

IF you are not sure people will want it OR are searching for product/market
fit THEN defer launch.

Always launch! Depending on the product/market sometimes you go big other
times you fly low with a soft-launch.

------
larsmak
As many others in here I'm continuously working on start-up ideas when my day-
job is over. One of these is nearing it's beta phase. Ideally I'd do a closed
beta-test for invite users only. They would have to expect all their data to
be lost after the closed beta period. What is the best strategy to attract
such users? It's no exactly "Show HN"-material as it's far from a finished
product. But I'd like to get early feedback from users that does not expect to
much..

------
neoveller
I think this is the first post I've ever intentionally "kudos"'d. Launches are
hard. The title is intentional link-bait for HN, but it rings at least in part
true: a grand launch carries a lot of expectations, but means only the start
of an effort to find your target market.

------
usablebytes
UCD forces you to decide and keep focused on the target audience from the very
beginning. That approach helps every corner of the business, I believe and
would surely have helped you save the day. But as you said correctly, lesson
learned.

------
alexeston
This is exactly what I'm doing with my own product, I'm not launching it. I'm
improving it, batch after batch, till it's good enough for people to come to
me, and maybe the press as well, if lucky.

------
hammaz
Good to hear this perspective. Thats exactly what I am pursuing for
WannaGet.com , and its encouraging to know that I am following a route that
more experienced folks agree with :-)

------
edouard1234567
I would suggest going even further and not raise money before having some kind
of traction or a strong product/market fit based on a statistically
significant user pool.

~~~
logicallee
I would suggest going even further and not even build anything until you have
some kind of traction or a strong product/market fit based on a statistically
significant user pool.

~~~
logicallee
OK, I see what the downvote is for. But let me explain why I say you
"shouldn't build anything" until you have traction or a strong product/market
fit.

Building ANYTHING takes money. You might not think so, but it's true: you
can't build some tiny part of "anything" without raising money.

You NEED have to have some resources to spend on it.

I mean if $0 is the true cost of building a pre-raising-money product to the
stage of where you can show traction or a product/market fit, then I'll take
the world's supply of pre-raising-a-round product RIGHT NOW.

That's right. If you have a product that is available for $0 and that has not
yet shown a product/market fit or some kind of traction, I'll TAKE IT. Right
now. Or whatever fraction of it you want to sell me at that valuation. Just
hit me up for a reply.

If, however, as I suspect, the world supply of that is itself 0, then you have
to realize that any kind of product, even pre-"raising a round", itself costs
money and resources.

You should not spend EVEN those resources until you have some kind of traction
or product/market fit. Really. I'm serious.

Have product/market fit, have traction, before having product. Don't build it
until it's wroth building.

------
gagabity
If you had funding already then why not pour a couple of grand into
advertising? That's a pretty sure way to get into the top sellers list.

------
saddino
Another reminder why off-brand soft launches on mobile are key to testing and
understanding your potential customer and market.

------
k__
The first few paragraphs sum everything up that's wrong with the "start-up
scene"

------
orangethirty
Don't drink the kool aid.

~~~
phil
Yes, but which kool aid should you not drink more of?

The big launch kool aid? Or the anti-big launch backlash kool aid?

~~~
nwhitehead
Maybe don't drink any kool aid at all and focus on delivering value to
customers.

~~~
phil
Ah, the customer-value kool aid. Tasty stuff!

