It was good advice, and I agree with you. We added email about a week later and got a couple hundred signups to it. But by then there wasnt enough traffic or submissions to really make those digests valuable.
We should have had it at launch. It still might not have been enough, but it would have been a much better shot.
I don't think we launched too early at all. We launched with enough to get something that blogs could use to get support directly and easily from their readers. We've been building out features since then.
I liked nReduce, but I think a lot of the ideas could have used some feedback (including mine at the time), or early pivots, some were very obviously not that great
It might have been good to incorporate some sort of acceptance gateway or idea validation phase.
Maybe something like you create iterations of your landing page and the software auto A/B tests them for you. Once you have X signups for one you can join the others at the next stage. Video posts can also go on your home page to keep your fans informed.
They probably should have taken some small amount of money from users at some point also, even if just to keep the service going
Thanks for the comment! You might be right but we collected people before the launch with this way, and we made pre-sales before the launch to our waitlist. So it really helps to collect an audience.
definitely good advice. part of the reason we decided to post today was to try to get a larger user base and figure out what services they're most interested in. we plan on keeping our initial beta groups small, so we can work closely with our users to figure out what services they love, what they don't really need and what we can add that would improve their experience.
Yes I think they underestimated the level of interest and how many first impressions they were going to deliver. Regardless if they actually do generate a user base having meaningful conversations organic growth back to the launch numbers is very doable.
I agree with you. In my belief, we have built a great product yet in 6 months we only have 86 users. However I think we have not made it clear for people so they would share on their walls or timelines -which is something I'm working on.- Some of our visitors got the point and signed up but most of them did not.
Do you think "invitation only" launches are more successful? I think they are for a certain degree because from what I see people want to feel special and they want to have their place on that new thing before somebody else or everyone else does.
"Launching" on the heels of the announcement from Sparrow seems like a poor choice. A lot of people felt like they just got dumped. Then again, this is just another fancy "Give us your email address for whenever we get our act together" page, so maybe people will be more lenient.
This is fair. I agree, this is very premature, but I think we were just very excited with the fact that we've reached a stage where publicity is our greatest ally. Since this is going to be a high-school powered organization, we figured it'd be best to have users who are interested in the idea "ready to go", that way there's no downtime between our live app and traction with schools.
I didn't mean to plug our startup with empty words, I just wanted to see what sort of traction could be garnered from these outlets. Early-adopters are the backbone of any startup, for-profit or not-for-profit.
Solid post. Any advice for a founder on how to start engaging with users after a few years of _not_ doing that? Luckily we've had success despite our inability to get user feedback, but obviously we need to do better.
No, this is probably the only thing they did right. Getting early traction is important for many reasons.
- It gives you an opportunity to get early feedback from people interested in your product. If you can get an email you can talk to your users.
- It gives you some early KPIs and a limited, but important understanding of acquisition channels. If you can't find any one who is interested in your product as a concept, how will you get users?
- It motivates companies to get products out earlier.
- It helps when talking to investors to mention that you have 1,000 people on a waiting list.
I agree though, you always need to get the product to market.
Right! This tool is useful for early exposure and validating ideas. If you're already receiving large amounts of inbound traffic, you might not need this tool anymore.
OK, I completely disagree with this. Sure, private alpha or private testing is necessary, but there is a time for a launch PR. We just had a fairly big launch when we went public, and we spent a lot of time and effort (not money) on it. I wouldn't have done it any other way - we now have thousands of visitors a day, and it's a steady stream. Without the big push, I'm not sure where we'd be today. I dont think you can depend on the 'build it and they will come' attitude. I prefer the "relentlessly focus on acquiring users" approach.
Still have to share the inside details on our launch. Will do so ASAP and hopefully other's can benefit or user some of our tips. we owe a lot to this community!
The lesson learned (and I'm sorry if you had to read between the lines a bit) is that Techcrunch and the other major outlets aren't the only course for marketing your product. I could have busted my ass making putting together everything I'd need to make Arrington raise an eyebrow, or I could focus on trying to get the word out in locations where I was more likely to get conversions. I chose the latter.
To be honest "There’s no glamorous future for Mailmanagr, as well." pretty much sums up this article. It may be a good product, but its aim is not to be a high growth start-up and technically its just a component to an existing app.
Yes, it is just a component to an existing app, but it's a component that customers seem to want, and that the original app's developer didn't seem interested in building (but who can ever tell with 37signals).
When looking for early users for a new product, it’s usually better to reach out directly to people one at a time or post in small communities like niche subreddits rather than trying to do a big launch on HN or ProductHunt with the hope of getting a lot of users all at once.
Ditto for more “scalable” marketing like ads or PR. It’s (usually) best to save those until after you have a core group of happy engaged users that you cultivated by hand.
There are exceptions where people do the big launch or large-scale marketing right away and it works, but the risk of failure with that strategy is high.
The "launch with 100 free members" strategy worked extremely well to avoid the classic "chicken and egg" problem. It's hard to quantify, but it set the tone for the community with friendly, intelligent, and experienced people.
As a new member, that led to an amazing first-time user experience where I got high-quality answers to every question I posted.
And now I'm motivated to help out other members just as the first members helped me.
Launch revenue is great, but it won't survive unless it gets this right ^^
I agree, and we're on it. We're only just now allowing more people into the product and it's still a long way from being openly available publicly.
With young companies and products, it's tough to balance all the constraints with the goals. We've spent a lot of time to learn what our users really love about the product. We agree that we need to get a profile out very soon, but we're happy we've put the core of the product first from the beginning.
We should have had it at launch. It still might not have been enough, but it would have been a much better shot.
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