5 ms·

Things I did before app launch and what I wish I had done

132 points by andrewon 4y ago

pier25 4y ago
I've never understood why people focus on launching products on Product Hunt. Isn't it just a community of people building stuff? I'd get it for a product aimed at builders but otherwise...
jdthedisciple 4y ago
@OP Congrats on the launch, and very useful advice for the pre-launch phase. Will you be commiting to this app or start something else now?
- andrewon 4y ago
  Thanks. I now have a few apps in the app store. I want to try spending resources growing them.
JanSt 4y ago
Congrats on launch. Do you develop apps on the side or do you make a living with them?
- andrewon 4y ago
  On the side.
swyx 4y ago
here are my notes as someone who studied this stuff extensively for my book launch (just crossed $200k revenue) https://github.com/sw-yx/brain/blob/906dbc6fd6d22fa69968ebc6b79a73988a235af0/R%20-%20Product/Launch%20Cheatsheet.md https://github.com/sw-yx/brain/blob/906dbc6fd6d22fa69968ebc6... in generally for OP's stuff i would disagree on launching on product hunt first. PH is a giant pyramid scheme where people just compete for the #1 badge each day. what the most successful products do is launch everywhere else first, and then after a few months email their happy customers to support them on PH. this is why you are #20 because you didnt study the game
- harryvederci 4y ago
  That's amazing, I wouldn't have expected anyone to take action when they get an email saying "Please upvote me on ${website}!" Do you find your customers are dedicated enough to create a Product Hunt account for you, or do they happen to already have one?
  - mkl95 4y ago
    It sounds odd to me. It's the usual thing employees do, but how many employees does the average startup have right after launch? The only time I considered promoting an app on PH I was the only stakeholder. On the other hand "Please upvote me on ${website}! And get a free yearly subscription" could work, but it's going to make your product look cheap.
  - swyx 4y ago
    i mean given that you just need ~500 to get #1 slot, emailing a few thousand customers and giving them some discount might do it
- ilrwbwrkhv 4y ago
  Product hunt is the cheap zone. Any product there means they are marketing heavy and lack quality. That is my take anyways. Quality software simply won't show up there these days.
  - klabb3 4y ago
    I can imagine as a PH user this could be the case, but if you're a developer it can't hurt to post there, right?
    - ilrwbwrkhv 4y ago
      I can't speak for others but none of my portfolio companies post there. Of course someone might hunt us but that's different.
  - dvnguyen 4y ago
lmeyerov 4y ago
FWIW... None of those are marketing investments into evergreen communities that will keep growing the app. Build channels, not one-offs. Exceptions exist, like social networks where you can do stunts until it grows itself, or ads when you have the rest figured out or lots of VC $... but good to only do if you have to.
- joshuaheard 4y ago
  I'm about to launch an Apple App Store app. What channels exist for an Apple App Store app besides the app store?
  - lmeyerov 4y ago
    We are in a similar boat from the b2b side - we sell a small % of our software in the Amazon and Azure Marketplaces. Importantly, we don't compete in the Marketplaces for advertising, just work with them for final purchasing, and what our bigger users really like, easier self-hosting POCing. (Infinite trial, even.) For channels, we instead work with graph databases (Neo4j, Neptune, ...), security/IT log systems (Splunk, ...), AI framework providers (Nvidia, ...), and federal partners so as their communities want to answer graph-y questions about their data easily, they know we do cool GPU graph viz and now graph autoML. Our demo blogposts, talks, notebooks, streamlit apps, etc, are useful tutorials for how to do these. At this point, we are lucky enough to have built a small community as well. Even in the case of Marketplaces, we do collaborate with those companies... But then database teams whom we help create more complete (complementary) offerings. So the question is who are your communities, which depends on your app. Btw, if interesting to anyone, we are hiring infra + backend :)
underwater 4y ago
OP, you might want to redesign your logo and re-think the name. The logo will be covered by both a trademark and copyright. Eventually Notion will come knocking with a strongly worded letter asking you to change one or both of them.

132 points by andrewon 4y ago

I've never understood why people focus on launching products on Product Hunt. Isn't it just a community of people building stuff? I'd get it for a product aimed at builders but otherwise...

jdthedisciple 4y ago

@OP Congrats on the launch, and very useful advice for the pre-launch phase. Will you be commiting to this app or start something else now?

andrewon 4y ago
Thanks. I now have a few apps in the app store. I want to try spending resources growing them.

JanSt 4y ago

Congrats on launch. Do you develop apps on the side or do you make a living with them?

andrewon 4y ago
On the side.

swyx 4y ago

here are my notes as someone who studied this stuff extensively for my book launch (just crossed $200k revenue) https://github.com/sw-yx/brain/blob/906dbc6fd6d22fa69968ebc6b79a73988a235af0/R%20-%20Product/Launch%20Cheatsheet.md https://github.com/sw-yx/brain/blob/906dbc6fd6d22fa69968ebc6... in generally for OP's stuff i would disagree on launching on product hunt first. PH is a giant pyramid scheme where people just compete for the #1 badge each day. what the most successful products do is launch everywhere else first, and then after a few months email their happy customers to support them on PH. this is why you are #20 because you didnt study the game

harryvederci 4y ago
That's amazing, I wouldn't have expected anyone to take action when they get an email saying "Please upvote me on ${website}!" Do you find your customers are dedicated enough to create a Product Hunt account for you, or do they happen to already have one?
- mkl95 4y ago
  It sounds odd to me. It's the usual thing employees do, but how many employees does the average startup have right after launch? The only time I considered promoting an app on PH I was the only stakeholder. On the other hand "Please upvote me on ${website}! And get a free yearly subscription" could work, but it's going to make your product look cheap.
- swyx 4y ago
  i mean given that you just need ~500 to get #1 slot, emailing a few thousand customers and giving them some discount might do it
ilrwbwrkhv 4y ago
Product hunt is the cheap zone. Any product there means they are marketing heavy and lack quality. That is my take anyways. Quality software simply won't show up there these days.
- klabb3 4y ago
  I can imagine as a PH user this could be the case, but if you're a developer it can't hurt to post there, right?
  - ilrwbwrkhv 4y ago
    I can't speak for others but none of my portfolio companies post there. Of course someone might hunt us but that's different.
- dvnguyen 4y ago

lmeyerov 4y ago

FWIW... None of those are marketing investments into evergreen communities that will keep growing the app. Build channels, not one-offs. Exceptions exist, like social networks where you can do stunts until it grows itself, or ads when you have the rest figured out or lots of VC $... but good to only do if you have to.

joshuaheard 4y ago
I'm about to launch an Apple App Store app. What channels exist for an Apple App Store app besides the app store?
- lmeyerov 4y ago
  We are in a similar boat from the b2b side - we sell a small % of our software in the Amazon and Azure Marketplaces. Importantly, we don't compete in the Marketplaces for advertising, just work with them for final purchasing, and what our bigger users really like, easier self-hosting POCing. (Infinite trial, even.) For channels, we instead work with graph databases (Neo4j, Neptune, ...), security/IT log systems (Splunk, ...), AI framework providers (Nvidia, ...), and federal partners so as their communities want to answer graph-y questions about their data easily, they know we do cool GPU graph viz and now graph autoML. Our demo blogposts, talks, notebooks, streamlit apps, etc, are useful tutorials for how to do these. At this point, we are lucky enough to have built a small community as well. Even in the case of Marketplaces, we do collaborate with those companies... But then database teams whom we help create more complete (complementary) offerings. So the question is who are your communities, which depends on your app. Btw, if interesting to anyone, we are hiring infra + backend :)

underwater 4y ago

OP, you might want to redesign your logo and re-think the name. The logo will be covered by both a trademark and copyright. Eventually Notion will come knocking with a strongly worded letter asking you to change one or both of them.