It seems almost trite now. For the last few years, launching products—or the promise of products—has been a series of: 1) Get a tech blog to cover it, 2) Hope it hits Hacker News or Techmeme, 3) ????, and of course 4) Profit! So it’s always nice to see young Portland entrepreneurs like Jackson Gariety re-evaluating this process.
Launch day sets you up for failure. Facebook launched in 2004 on a mailing list, not with a TechCrunch article, not with news coverage, not with a hackathon.
This is the humble launch. Move slowly, seed carefully, target your audience, provide value to few, and get them to tell their friends. Accept what happens as a learning experience. Get people to try your crack and hope they want to take another hit of the pipe. Now you’ll have time to re-assess your situation, and put out fires carefully.
It might not all be about the “[Insert your favorite online resource] Effect,” after all.
For more, read Jackson’s post on reassessing your launch strategy.
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Yep, pretty much. Except big launches can really help depending on the product or service you are offering. So the answer is like always, “it depends”.
You must be a fan of Derek Sivers – http://sivers.org . He’s a smart guy with lots to teach.
Nice post, Jackson.