Don't just ship it. Launch it. Do you agree?
Nishith from True Sparrow
23 replies
Replies
Nico Prananta@nicnocquee
Monika
If I made a new product, I will ship it, find 100 customers laboriously (directly call/email/DM companies, customers one by one), then launch.
Right now with Coparrot https://www.producthunt.com/post... I launched it first then now searching for customers directly. I don't think it's right. Launching should be a way to grow user base. Not to find first customers.
Share
@nicnocquee We took a similar approach with https://www.producthunt.com/post...
Your product is interesting, I'm going to leave some feedback.
Suprememinds
@nicnocquee @shawn_mclean Wow! You guys have amazing products - really enjoyed going through them! We have a similar thought process and just launched our product on product hunt today - https://www.producthunt.com/post....
We have our core users and are now looking to grow our community and get more feedback. Would love to hear from you!
Sales Sparrow by True Sparrow
@nicnocquee Nico! Cool product. Wondering why shouldn't launching be a way to get early users? Launching early could give you a great head start in finding your first 100 customers.
@nicnocquee @nishith_shah What we found out with PH is that you really do need some core users to jump on the launch and bring up the votes and activity. Otherwise, it's useless.
We ran this experiment with our product, our metrics from 50+ votes from our network, lead to about 20 unique visitors coming from Product Hunt.
Monika
@nishith_shah I think if you have sizeable number of followers or subscribers, launching early could work well for you. But for people like me who doesn't have thousands of followers, getting the first customers personally first will give me a good traction when I actually launch it, say in PH, or other places. It will also give me a chance to polish the product, the landing page, the messaging, etc before going to broader market. There's a paragraph in The Minimalist Entrepreneur book that says, "Eventually, strangers will buy your product, but mostly because your customers are spreading the gospel of your business and product, not because they saw an ad." I found it really true.
AI Titans - The Quiz
Nodding my head aggressively
Never thought about it this way, thanks for clarifying!
Suprememinds
Agreed. This is what we thought while building Suprememinds. We have our set of core users and are now looking for more feedback from the community at product hunt.
Agree with you. To "ship" makes you feel you're done with your part. But to "launch" makes you feel to go that extra mile and make sure that the end user gets the best experience.
Sales Sparrow by True Sparrow
@sanveer_osahan correct. Another way to look at it is how @vivek_ganesan explained: 'shipping' is about making the product available and 'launch' is about getting the word out.
Notesally 2.0
Love the play of words involving various modes of transport ⛵🚀
I understand 'shipping' as just making the product available and 'launch' as getting the word out with a goal to get feedback (optional: getting early adopters, making the products available)
Did you intend the same definition in the question, @nishith_shah ?
Notesally 2.0
@nishith_shah Nice 😎 If we just ship the product, assuming that people will flock towards the landing page and buy it, i would call it over-confidence. I have been over-confident before with my previous (& to some extent) current product.
When we launch it, the thing that makes me go WOW is the ability to get early subscribers even without a product in hand. So, I am all for launching early and if the launch goes well, let's ship (at least in my next product) 😜
Sales Sparrow by True Sparrow
@vivek_ganesan hmm.. launching without a product? That's taking launching-early to a different level. 😜
Invisibility
@nishith_shah @vivek_ganesan Perfect definition here. Launching is definitely the way to go rather than just shipping. Interesting how the phrases are so similar, yet so different!
WeCooked
I don’t fully agree. I think you need a level of confidence in the problem your solving and releasing early is great if it does 80% of what your looking for with 20% of the resources. Then talk and iterate.
@nishith_shah Having been through several trying experiences around product launch, I can say you should ship it to an involved, high value community that can provide active feedback on feature set and fit before you think about launching. If you can't create the community, you might want to re-evaluate your product and model altogether. I'd rather spend time and money on the community build than launch incorrectly and burn the value of a strategic launch that has a better than average chance to cast a wide net and help me scale.
Sales Sparrow by True Sparrow
@brian_nutt that's an interesting alternate point of view. Each product and the domain the product operates in is different, and so YMMV as far as the launch is concerned.
Regarding building a community and engaging with it.. that's a prerequisite to launching correctly. I don't see those two as mutually exclusive.
Launching early allows you to get early users, early feedback, and in some cases it helps you to fail fast.