Why You Haven't Launched

0. You're truly not ready.<p>A recurring meme here (and almost everywhere else) is the equivalent of "Just Do It". Excellent advice, almost all the time. Almost. Except when it's terrible advice.<p>Yes, as someone who has suffered after launching too soon, I will go against prevailing wisdom and suggest the unthinkable, "Maybe you're really not ready and can do more harm than good by launching prematurely." Just a few of the bad things that can happen:<p>1. People will visit once, see that it's crap and <i>never come back again</i>, no matter what you do.<p>2. You will be overwhelmed by support requirements to the extent that all development stops.<p>3. You will be overwhelmed by support requirements to the extent that much support never gets addressed.<p>4. Your calendar becomes science fiction; everything has changed and it's a whole new ballgame.<p>5. The stress level will become so overwhelming for some of your people that you will simply lose them. Forever.<p>6. If you have taken people's money and not delivered, the guilt can become so overwhelming that it cripples you.<p>7. Your marathon has turned into a sprint you cannot finish. You have launched and lost.<p>I love the idea of pushing the envelope and launching sooner rather than later. You must have real world feedback and launching is best way to get it. But launching <i>too early</i> early is just as bad as launching <i>too late</i>. So how do you know when the time is right? I don't have a definitive answer, but I do know that "your gut" is a critical input. Sooner or later, you just have to go with it.

So if I can't find the right idea in a month I should give up and become 'a lifer'?<p>I don't buy it.<p>The corollary of this is that every entrepreneur should be able to come up with an idea that will be a rock solid success <i>every</i> month.<p>It is easy to come up with ideas, but successful ideas (whether the reason for the success is being first to a new market, a better implementation of an existing idea, or whatever reason turns a good idea into a successful idea) are hard to come by.<p>Superstar entrepreneurs may be able to come up with such ideas with such frequency.<p>But if you can't, you should give up? I don't think so.

The procrastination point is quite an obvious one. By way of cutting down on my HN time (as I don't play WoW), I've started using the pomodoro technique (<a href="http://www.pomodorotechnique.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.pomodorotechnique.com/</a>) to keep me focused on one thing at a time. So far it seems to be working quite well and I'm cutting down on my distractions.<p>What do other HN'ers use here to cut down on distractions and interruptions?

Some valid points here, but I strongly disagree with No. 2 "You’re Set on Doing Everything Yourself" for various reasons. So here's why I think you should do everything yourself, at least for the first time around. (If it's your second or third time around the block, some of these probably wont apply.)<p>1) <i>Constraints force innovation.</i> This could be taken several directions, but what I'm really trying to get at here is if you have very limited time and limited budget, you're forced to do only what is necessary and only add critical features to your product. A one-man bootstrapped startup probably won't have the time and funding to add every single feature, which is blessing in disguise - the product ships faster and doesn't have a bunch of crap that nobody wants.<p>2) <i>Nobody realizes your vision like you do.</i> Sure, other people could do some of the coding, design, and usability work for you, but who says those people will get it right? They don't see the product like you do, and that could make or break your vision. (This doesn't apply to dime-a-dozen skills like psd slicing).<p>3) <i>It's invaluable to learn new skillsets.</i> Maybe you aren't destined to be the world's greatest designer or code ninja, but learning these skills will enhance your understanding and communication down the road. Knowledge of these skills could certainly aid in hiring employees and could prevent you from getting burned in an outsource deal later on.

No the real reason is: you can still w.nk yourself with the idea! (pardon my French) without the pain of taking care/answering real, demanding, not getting it, or plain indifferent (non)users. Until you have launched for real, you can dream of your beloved app/API/novel/idea/etc, that it will be so great, so new, so cool, everybody's going to be blown away and come to it in flocks. You can still dream in the Limbo. Once it's out ... the hard indifferent reality sets in. (Until that hockey stick curve of course ;)

For me, it's a case of "You Have Launched, But No One Noticed", I launched TradesAlerts (<a href="http://tradesalerts.com" rel="nofollow">http://tradesalerts.com</a>) in Nov 2010, the first few days got a few users from HN and Facebook... in short -&#62; no sign-up.<p>Looking at my Analytics stats, most of my visitors are from the USA, but my site is more Asia focused. So now, I'm working on a variation to make it more localized.

I've found the biggest distraction from getting a product launched so far is contracting.<p>Although it has meant I've got the cash now, so I'm bringing a guy on part-time through summer.

Our product is mostly ready for launch but we're waiting for a partner to finish integration with our API so we have some actual data to present present to our users.

Great article and insights. I just happened to listen today to Techzing's episode 56 which has as a guest the author of this same article.