6 ms·

Never Launch, Just Iterate

78 points by spencerfry 17y ago

jacquesm 17y ago
That's actually really good advice. If you do use the press and other media be prepared for a let-down, all that stuff is only a momentary impulse, and unless you are extremely sticky you are not going to get much out of it. Satisfied, returning users is the only way to really grow a business, it's easy to see why: Even if everybody in the world came by tomorrow but nobody got stuck you'd be looking at 0 traffic on Friday next week, but if instead of that you'd have 1000 new users each day of which 10% got stuck you'd have at least 2,000 visitors per day by Friday next week. Now 2,000 visitors per day doesn't sound like it is much but depending on the product you might already be in the 'black' at that level. And if not, wait 90 days... In practice it is a lot harder to get people to come again to your site than it is to get random individuals to come just once. I remember coming across google the first time and instantly changing my homepage from 'altavista' to 'google'. That's all it took, it simply worked and worked so much better that there would have been no reason to draw out the switching process.
- vaksel 17y ago
  How exactly do you plan on getting 1,000 new visitors every day, without a big media blitz for them to start hearing about your site? Sure you could buy ads, but you'll probably end up spending a thousand bucks per day just to get that 1,000 users. And if you want 1,000 new people per day organically, you pretty much need 200-300K users for them to tell their friends about you. A big media launch will put you on the map, sure only a tiny portion of users will stick around, but those few will give you that starting base to jump off from. I don't see why that 10% stickiness you talk about, wouldn't also work during a launch. Sure you'll probably get a lot more lookie loos, but surely you'll reach a wider audience. I'm actually doing a "launch" tomorrow, Hopefully I'll get some coverage, and if it's nothing but lookie loos, I can always go to doing the X users per day thing.
  - spencerfry 17y ago
    I think there's a difference between a media launch and a product launch. Fraser wrote a short comment about this directly on the blog post: "I'm also a fan of the notion of decoupling the product launch from the marketing launch. Although, I guess the idea of 'never launch, just iterate' takes it one step further."
  - jacquesm 17y ago
    Give me your URL and I'll get you some links. As for 1,000 people per day costing you a thousand bucks, you're doing something wrong there. 30K per month gets you at least half a million uniques per month in a competitive market, but you'll have to do your own 'buys', not go through a middle man. A big media launch will get you most likely about 10 to 15,000 users and you'll drop to about 100 or so after one week. You don't have to believe me of course, but I've been there and done that several times now, the pattern for me so far has been fairly consistent. People that come from a newsfeed are usually not actively looking for what you are offering just moderately curious. The time you get them to 'stick' is when they are really in need of what you have to offer.
    - vaksel 17y ago
      awesome, thanks! it's http://styleguidance.com http://styleguidance.com :) I've had very good response from the alpha for it, and everyone seems to love it. I'm going by the rate of return on ads I've seen in the past. Sure you get a ton of clicks, but only a tiny portion actually registers. Way below that 10% you've talked about. No I trust you, I had a launch similar like that with another site. Had 60K the first two days. 20K on day 3. Then it slowly dwindled down to 1000 users a day. Those seem pretty loyal, but the problem was that it was a content site, that was generated entirely by me, and it wasn't worth focusing all my energy on something that brought in 2-3 bucks a day.
      - deleted 17y ago
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      - deleted 17y ago
        [deleted]
dmillar 17y ago
I don't see how launching and iterating are mutually exclusive.
fjabre 17y ago
Not in total agreement here. The web was just a tad simpler over a decade ago when Google 'launched' initially. In fact a lot of the web's titans like Ebay, Paypal, Google, Amazon etc.. were 'launched' during a different era if you will... It was called the 90s. I'm not so sure the same rules apply today. One should at least consider that things have changed in this regard. Every other product Google's come out with since then was 'launched' in what we'd consider the 'traditional' way. Gmail was invites, Wave is invites.. Maps was released with a lot of fanfare. What I do agree with is that immediate or front page media attention after launch is not indicative of the app's future success. In fact it seems the more hype things have in the beginning the less staying power they seem to have in the long run but I suppose it can go both ways and there is no one rule..
- Paton 17y ago
  Agreed.
- pxlpshr 17y ago
  Couldn't agree with you more. I agree with "release-early-iterate-often" however the notion of "never launch, just iterate" is bad advice IMO. This is also one of the few times I was surprised that more HN readers didn't poke holes in this blog post, but I think that's likely attributed to hacker ego in regard to "marketing" vs "engineering". A few thousands visitors does NOT mean you're doing things right, in fact it could be reinforcing poor judgement and a bad product. I've seen this happen countless times by founders who didn't know when to stop drinking their own kool-aid and meaningfully evaluate product holes because a handful of visitors swore it was the best thing since slice bread.
Alex3917 17y ago
Clearly not all businesses lend themselves to iterating over time. For example, if you started a restaurant and you opened it before you were able to make good food, then your initial reviews would be bad so you'd crash and burn. Rather than starting with the statement "never launch, just iterate" it would be better to start with the following question: "Should I start a business that lends itself to iteration?" That's an interesting question that's worth discussing. But as it stands this post is the wrong answer to the wrong question. (Which also shows how you can often catch sloppy thinking by making explicit the question that a statement is answering, and diffing that with the question you should be asking.) edit: I think the actual answer is that you should choose to start a business that lends itself to iteration, but that's different than the advice given. It's another case where the given advice is close enough to the truth that it tends to work, but the underlying rule is still wrong.
- gridspy 17y ago
  You are assuming here that every single potential customer reads the critics, and that the critics will not return to try you again. A restaurant that keeps its doors closed for the first two months had better have some great food to reclaim all those overheads when it finally opens. How can you be sure that the food is ever ready if you don't bring in at least a few customers?
  - Alex3917 17y ago
    "You are assuming here that every single potential customer reads the critics, and that the critics will not return to try you again." I'm only saying this is sometimes the case.
- patio11 17y ago
  if you started a restaurant and you opened it before you were able to make good food, then your initial reviews would be bad so you'd crash and burn At least one restaurant opened in your city last week. Of the set of restaurants which opened in your city last week, one of them is last in the alphabet. Without checking either what restaurants opened last week or what the reviews say about them, what did the reviews say about that restaurant? You should be so lucky as to have everyone know how bad you are.
IMorgothI12 17y ago
I appreciate this recommendation. "Thank you, you love me, you really love me!" - The Mask

78 points by spencerfry 17y ago

That's actually really good advice. If you do use the press and other media be prepared for a let-down, all that stuff is only a momentary impulse, and unless you are extremely sticky you are not going to get much out of it. Satisfied, returning users is the only way to really grow a business, it's easy to see why: Even if everybody in the world came by tomorrow but nobody got stuck you'd be looking at 0 traffic on Friday next week, but if instead of that you'd have 1000 new users each day of which 10% got stuck you'd have at least 2,000 visitors per day by Friday next week. Now 2,000 visitors per day doesn't sound like it is much but depending on the product you might already be in the 'black' at that level. And if not, wait 90 days... In practice it is a lot harder to get people to come again to your site than it is to get random individuals to come just once. I remember coming across google the first time and instantly changing my homepage from 'altavista' to 'google'. That's all it took, it simply worked and worked so much better that there would have been no reason to draw out the switching process.

vaksel 17y ago
How exactly do you plan on getting 1,000 new visitors every day, without a big media blitz for them to start hearing about your site? Sure you could buy ads, but you'll probably end up spending a thousand bucks per day just to get that 1,000 users. And if you want 1,000 new people per day organically, you pretty much need 200-300K users for them to tell their friends about you. A big media launch will put you on the map, sure only a tiny portion of users will stick around, but those few will give you that starting base to jump off from. I don't see why that 10% stickiness you talk about, wouldn't also work during a launch. Sure you'll probably get a lot more lookie loos, but surely you'll reach a wider audience. I'm actually doing a "launch" tomorrow, Hopefully I'll get some coverage, and if it's nothing but lookie loos, I can always go to doing the X users per day thing.
- spencerfry 17y ago
  I think there's a difference between a media launch and a product launch. Fraser wrote a short comment about this directly on the blog post: "I'm also a fan of the notion of decoupling the product launch from the marketing launch. Although, I guess the idea of 'never launch, just iterate' takes it one step further."
- jacquesm 17y ago
  Give me your URL and I'll get you some links. As for 1,000 people per day costing you a thousand bucks, you're doing something wrong there. 30K per month gets you at least half a million uniques per month in a competitive market, but you'll have to do your own 'buys', not go through a middle man. A big media launch will get you most likely about 10 to 15,000 users and you'll drop to about 100 or so after one week. You don't have to believe me of course, but I've been there and done that several times now, the pattern for me so far has been fairly consistent. People that come from a newsfeed are usually not actively looking for what you are offering just moderately curious. The time you get them to 'stick' is when they are really in need of what you have to offer.
  - vaksel 17y ago
    awesome, thanks! it's http://styleguidance.com http://styleguidance.com :) I've had very good response from the alpha for it, and everyone seems to love it. I'm going by the rate of return on ads I've seen in the past. Sure you get a ton of clicks, but only a tiny portion actually registers. Way below that 10% you've talked about. No I trust you, I had a launch similar like that with another site. Had 60K the first two days. 20K on day 3. Then it slowly dwindled down to 1000 users a day. Those seem pretty loyal, but the problem was that it was a content site, that was generated entirely by me, and it wasn't worth focusing all my energy on something that brought in 2-3 bucks a day.
    - deleted 17y ago
      [deleted]
    - deleted 17y ago
      [deleted]

dmillar 17y ago

I don't see how launching and iterating are mutually exclusive.

fjabre 17y ago

Not in total agreement here. The web was just a tad simpler over a decade ago when Google 'launched' initially. In fact a lot of the web's titans like Ebay, Paypal, Google, Amazon etc.. were 'launched' during a different era if you will... It was called the 90s. I'm not so sure the same rules apply today. One should at least consider that things have changed in this regard. Every other product Google's come out with since then was 'launched' in what we'd consider the 'traditional' way. Gmail was invites, Wave is invites.. Maps was released with a lot of fanfare. What I do agree with is that immediate or front page media attention after launch is not indicative of the app's future success. In fact it seems the more hype things have in the beginning the less staying power they seem to have in the long run but I suppose it can go both ways and there is no one rule..

Paton 17y ago
Agreed.
pxlpshr 17y ago
Couldn't agree with you more. I agree with "release-early-iterate-often" however the notion of "never launch, just iterate" is bad advice IMO. This is also one of the few times I was surprised that more HN readers didn't poke holes in this blog post, but I think that's likely attributed to hacker ego in regard to "marketing" vs "engineering". A few thousands visitors does NOT mean you're doing things right, in fact it could be reinforcing poor judgement and a bad product. I've seen this happen countless times by founders who didn't know when to stop drinking their own kool-aid and meaningfully evaluate product holes because a handful of visitors swore it was the best thing since slice bread.

Alex3917 17y ago

Clearly not all businesses lend themselves to iterating over time. For example, if you started a restaurant and you opened it before you were able to make good food, then your initial reviews would be bad so you'd crash and burn. Rather than starting with the statement "never launch, just iterate" it would be better to start with the following question: "Should I start a business that lends itself to iteration?" That's an interesting question that's worth discussing. But as it stands this post is the wrong answer to the wrong question. (Which also shows how you can often catch sloppy thinking by making explicit the question that a statement is answering, and diffing that with the question you should be asking.) edit: I think the actual answer is that you should choose to start a business that lends itself to iteration, but that's different than the advice given. It's another case where the given advice is close enough to the truth that it tends to work, but the underlying rule is still wrong.

gridspy 17y ago
You are assuming here that every single potential customer reads the critics, and that the critics will not return to try you again. A restaurant that keeps its doors closed for the first two months had better have some great food to reclaim all those overheads when it finally opens. How can you be sure that the food is ever ready if you don't bring in at least a few customers?
- Alex3917 17y ago
  "You are assuming here that every single potential customer reads the critics, and that the critics will not return to try you again." I'm only saying this is sometimes the case.
patio11 17y ago
if you started a restaurant and you opened it before you were able to make good food, then your initial reviews would be bad so you'd crash and burn At least one restaurant opened in your city last week. Of the set of restaurants which opened in your city last week, one of them is last in the alphabet. Without checking either what restaurants opened last week or what the reviews say about them, what did the reviews say about that restaurant? You should be so lucky as to have everyone know how bad you are.

IMorgothI12 17y ago

I appreciate this recommendation. "Thank you, you love me, you really love me!" - The Mask