4 ms·

Launch Early, Launch Simple, and Test

75 points by KMinshew 14y ago

hoi 14y ago
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 14y ago
  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 14y ago
    "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.
orthecreedence 14y ago
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.
- rpm4321 14y ago
  Well, yes and no. You may know that the market wants your product, but the exact feature set and usability requirements are probably still a mystery, and will almost certainly need to be refined anyway after launch no matter how long you preemptively perfect it. In the rare instance you describe, I would still look to launch quickly, just maybe not recklessly quick.
- fertel 14y ago
  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 14y ago
    "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-startup-should-be-a-lean-startup-or-embrace-the-pivot/ http://gigaom.com/2012/12/03/marc-andreessen-not-every-start...
chewxy 14y ago
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 14y ago
  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-when-you-arent-internet-famous/ https://zapier.com/blog/2012/04/05/finding-early-customers-w...
  - chewxy 14y ago
    ObamaNotBad.jpg! We've also had some success with content strategy (blogging, guest blogging etc), but that was really time consuming and more stressful than writing software. Only the committed will prevail in that. Or cheating (like hiring university english students to write articles for you) Long tail is hit/miss in my opinion. I use adplanning software all the time, and it really is a hit or miss
  - joonix 14y ago
    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.
    - chewxy 14y ago
      I found that Landerous on Themeforest actually did very well with conversions as long as your propositions are clear. I've deployed Landerous on 4/6 of my projects so far.
bcasey 14y ago
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?
josh33 14y ago
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.
jzd131 14y ago
I think it is different when you are selling to enterprises, they will only be so forgiving. What do you think?
rbn 14y ago
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.
stevecov2708 14y ago
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.
neya 14y ago
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.

75 points by KMinshew 14y ago

hoi 14y ago

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 14y ago
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 14y ago
  "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.

orthecreedence 14y ago

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.

rpm4321 14y ago
Well, yes and no. You may know that the market wants your product, but the exact feature set and usability requirements are probably still a mystery, and will almost certainly need to be refined anyway after launch no matter how long you preemptively perfect it. In the rare instance you describe, I would still look to launch quickly, just maybe not recklessly quick.
fertel 14y ago
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 14y ago
  "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-startup-should-be-a-lean-startup-or-embrace-the-pivot/ http://gigaom.com/2012/12/03/marc-andreessen-not-every-start...

chewxy 14y ago

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 14y ago
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-when-you-arent-internet-famous/ https://zapier.com/blog/2012/04/05/finding-early-customers-w...
- chewxy 14y ago
  ObamaNotBad.jpg! We've also had some success with content strategy (blogging, guest blogging etc), but that was really time consuming and more stressful than writing software. Only the committed will prevail in that. Or cheating (like hiring university english students to write articles for you) Long tail is hit/miss in my opinion. I use adplanning software all the time, and it really is a hit or miss
- joonix 14y ago
  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.
  - chewxy 14y ago
    I found that Landerous on Themeforest actually did very well with conversions as long as your propositions are clear. I've deployed Landerous on 4/6 of my projects so far.

bcasey 14y ago

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?

josh33 14y ago

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.

jzd131 14y ago

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

rbn 14y ago

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.

stevecov2708 14y ago

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.

neya 14y ago

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.