So true. Now, if all entrepreneurs could just stop reading this advice and actually apply it to their projects, that would be amazing. As the article pointed out in the introduction, they knew to launch early. They were told to launch early. And they still didn't. I'm guilty of the same mistake. Why is this cognitive dissonance still haunting all of us?
Maybe if everyone did follow the advice and "launch early" then some of us would realize we really DID launch too early and the popular idea of launching early would lose some of it's appeal?
I believe there is a growing number of startups that are realizing the importance of launching with a (fairly) polished product. There's just a ton of startups now, and standing out in the crowd is becoming more difficult.
When I hear "launch early" what I personally take it to mean is "iterate based on _real_ customer feedback", with the intention being you'll minimize wasted work. But this is how you should be running your business all the time - not just at the MVP stage.
Great advice. Launch early does not mean throw crap at a wall at hope it sticks. You do still need to make something that represents at least some of the function of your initial vision. Really you should make simple version and have a soft launch (not a ton of press) and when you actually "launch" it won't matter that you were out there with a half finished product because no one knew about you anyway. don't code locked in your basement make a demo and then get out there and show it to people and get feedback.
Thanks for this. Reading all this stuff about people releasing stuff after 2 nights of work I was starting to wonder if I was crazy having my closed beta planned after 3 months development. I've been working damn hard part-time on the core technology of my project. Time adds up slowly when you're working part-time, and surely sometimes a new idea really does require a fair bit of work before it's ready for customer feedback?
Then I saw your comment about iterating on real customer feedback and I realised there's no difference between "releasing early" and "release a beta [early and get feedback early]", and obviously the time to release a beta varies depending on the product. If you think about Google or Shazaam or any technology-based service, the core algorithms took time to develop to a point where a beta made sense because access to the technology was the product. Or am I missing something?)
Instead, what I think happens is that people learn to launch smaller. A big public launch is, in my view, pretty late to start getting feedback. A fairly polished product is necessary for mainstream users, but if you have something truly valuable you probably can start with something much rougher for people on the early side of the crossing-the-chasm model. Once you have something for the other side of the chasm, you can go after the big public launch.
Agreed entirely about iterating based on real customer feedback, though.
I think the author nailed it with his "excuse he didn't admit to" paragraph, i.e. it he was afraid it would fail. As long as you haven't actually failed, you can still fantasize about retiring a billionaire in two years time.
It takes a lot of courage to burst your own bubble at the earliest possible opportunity.
I am working on a start up in my spare time myself. My partner and I know very well that we need to launch and iterate. For me, there's a fear that if we launch too early, there may be too many issues that will turn users away. When we will finally be "ready" (as much as we could be), those users will not want to come back and try our service. It's all about first impressions.
Having said that, I STILL believe in launching early. I interpret it, though, as stripping as many parts of the product as possible and then gradually adding them in
How many users will you turn away? Do you think it will be a significant portion of your potential users? To be clear, don't you think it's worth having .05% of your total possible user base turned away so that you can understand what the other 99.95% want?
well, it's a tough one... Intellectually, I agree with you, but it's sort of a gut feeling. The issue is that as a start-up you are limited in resources. So how many campaigns can we run? How many friends can we nag to use our service time and time again? etc. You don't want to exhaust your resources at the beginning.
Of course we will launch and iterate, but this is just a fear. Is it rational? Maybe not. I hope not :-)
LinkedIn's founder Reid Hoffman once said: "If you are not embarrassed by your first release, you've launched too late!"
If you want to try stuff out early, also consider in-person guerrilla user testing, running ad-driven tests on a fake brand, buying low-cost traffic, and asking fellow entrepreneurs to try things out. For more on this, the Lean Startup Circle mailing list has a lot of good ideas.
