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.
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:
1. People will visit once, see that it's crap and never come back again, no matter what you do.
2. You will be overwhelmed by support requirements to the extent that all development stops.
3. You will be overwhelmed by support requirements to the extent that much support never gets addressed.
4. Your calendar becomes science fiction; everything has changed and it's a whole new ballgame.
5. The stress level will become so overwhelming for some of your people that you will simply lose them. Forever.
6. If you have taken people's money and not delivered, the guilt can become so overwhelming that it cripples you.
7. Your marathon has turned into a sprint you cannot finish. You have launched and lost.
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 too early early is just as bad as launching too late. 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.
1. People will visit once, see that it's crap and never come back again, no matter what you do.
Most of your cases are valid and important, but this point is unworthy of your concern. It's unbelievably hard to produce Internet content that is hated AND widespread. More often, crap is filtered and forgotten. Scroll to the bottom of any large HN thread to see what I mean - there's always a long tail of posts that are practically unread, some written by well-respected members of the community.
Irritating some fickle people is a small price to pay for getting feedback from someone who likes your idea.
Cuil didn't have the problem of people visiting once and never coming back again despite its amazing strides. It had the problem of being crap from start to finish. If Cuil had improved, I guarantee you most of the early visitors would have given it a second look.
"People will visit once" is a nice problem to have. Realistically, by the time you have nontrivial traction that way, your software will probably be less crappy. Plus, the kind of people who will subject themselves to sites so new they aren't on The Googles have, ahem, unique expectations about product quality.
yes. I have a site that gets enough SEO juice to have 500-1000 uniques a day for the last 8 months...and none of it from the big G. I've done zero marketing...the eyeballs just keep on coming. I think its fine if some of the first eyeballs never come back...but if you stick around long enough and keep iterating, I believe many probably will.
I've heard this called the "Netscape Effect" after NS4, which was so bug-riddled and bloated that people left for Internet Explorer in droves... it makes sense.
But some of those problems sound like they could be ameliorated by minimising features and making sure that the few features that you do implement are tested as thoroughly as possible. If someone looks at your software and it doesn't do what they want, they might come back, especially if they hear that you've added stuff. If they look at your software and it tries to do what they want then crashes, it's less likely. Similarly, if you lack features then more of the support requests you have to deal with will be "I want this!" rather than "I tried to do this and it didn't work" -- so you can send back a quick "thanks for the feedback" form email and then direct development to add the features people are asking for. And, of course, if your product does what it says on the tin (and just doesn't say it does very much) then #6 won't apply.
So agreed that "your gut" is a great input on the go-live date, but another good one is:
- Have I used it enough to be sure that I know about most of the bugs?
- Have I fixed all of the ones that matter (for a fairly pernickety value of "matter")?
(Of course, the line between a "bug" and a "feature that I really want" can be a fine one, especially in some industries and for certain users. But I don't think that's avoidable -- when you launch you are guaranteed to not have every feature that every user wants.)
I've started trying to narrow the scope of features required for launch, where the minimum set of features is not with respect to the full set I want, nor with what customers might need, nor what will differentiate me from competitors - but the minimum set that would make it have some use, to some customers.
It doesn't matter if other products are more useful; nor if that minimum set expresses the really cool goal I have, or the essence of my approach. Just that it be some use to some one.
I think of this a little bit like a strategy for proving theorems: if you haven't got time to prove the thing you are aiming at, but you need to publish something, you can always restrict your assumptions and goal to what you can manage, and prove that. Now you have a base you can build on.
Yeah, the "right time" is what's important imo. Generally speaking, "just getting something out there" is a good plan - but it's not a hard and fast rule (despite what 37signals et all might have you believe :)
You should launch early because contact with the customer is what you really need. But whatever you launch needs to work. Launch with a lot less and make sure what you launch with actually works.
Launch with the absolute minimum amount that actually provides value to the customer. This is usually a lot less than you think it is.
So if I can't find the right idea in a month I should give up and become 'a lifer'?
I don't buy it.
The corollary of this is that every entrepreneur should be able to come up with an idea that will be a rock solid success every month.
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.
Superstar entrepreneurs may be able to come up with such ideas with such frequency.
But if you can't, you should give up? I don't think so.
I kinda think back to how PG says that the founders are more important than the idea -- That if the idea was worth starting at all, then it could always be pivoted as long as the founders are fearless and excited enough to keep working and applying changes to their idea.
I can't imagine someone not being able to think of an idea within a month -- but I can imagine someone who shuts down all of his own ideas because he's afraid of failure. Following the blog post, someone like this really probably isn't suited for startup life at all. He'd probably find himself in some of the other of the Five Reasons if he gets that far.
It's hyperbole, dude. Sarcasm to make a point. This is certainly not something to be taken literally. The idea is to not sit around and analyze ideas for 12 months.
The idea seems to be that it doesn't have to be the right idea, or a successful idea, but it does have to be an idea worth pursuing. If you don't have that, you'll just be spinning.
I guess an 'idea worth pursuing' needs to be good enough to overcome the fear associated with starting a startup. You need a strong belief in the idea if you have a lot of fear to overcome.
Maybe his point(1) is indirectly really about point(5) (for many of us)
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 (http://www.pomodorotechnique.com/) 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.
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.)
1) Constraints force innovation. 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.
2) Nobody realizes your vision like you do. 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).
3) It's invaluable to learn new skillsets. 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 (http://tradesalerts.com) in Nov 2010, the first few days got a few users from HN and Facebook... in short -> no sign-up.
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.
Did you mean "Nov 2010" ? If so, I'm surprised you only gave it a few days before giving up and putting a "This is now a Closed site, consider joining the Forum instead." message up...
O... I'm not giving up, instead I'm working on a variation which overcome these issues;
- Target Asian traffic instead USA traffic.
- Try to convince users I'm not selling snake oil. It is not easy especially when the service can help investors make money. A common question I get is why then am I giving it away. People might think I'm trying to Pump and Dump the stocks.
So now, I am focusing my efforts on my friends and WOM instead. I hope by helping them, they can recommend potential customers to me. I feel that this approach might be more appropriate for this type of service.
Hopefully that was a typo, otherwise you launched a maximum of 10 days ago? It's hardly time to give up yet.
Work on getting posts up on hn, reedit and maybe digg, pro ote and be patient!
I am beginning to notice "Patience is a key ingredient when you launched a startup." Point taken. I am also drafting a series of posts for the site. Hopefully they will make Reddit in due course.
This is why, when I get a web server for a project I pre-pay for a year rather than going month to month. If after 3 months I get bored of the project, or discouraged, I can just leave it alone to go on autopilot for the rest of the year- rather than seeing that charge on my credit card every month.
I am thinking of setting a server in Amazon AWS for this purpose too. Once I completed the low traffic/CPU utilization projects, I move it to AWS, reserved instance are cheap for 3 years and domains is only like $8 per year. Very affordable.
Wow - I had never done the math before but a reserved micro instance works out to $7.39 a month (not counting future price decreases) for 3 years. That's a great idea, thanks!
I had nowhere near 100% utilization (in consulting) between May 15th and October 15th but I didn't get a single line written for Appointment Reminder in that interim. I just couldn't find the mental bandwidth or the kick in the pants I needed to dig in and start writing out the full system ex-nihilio.
What eventually worked for me was getting myself about 2.5 months of a breather from all consulting commitments and getting BCC past the busy season. I've been able to devote almost 100% of my time the last two weeks to AR, and it is progressing faster than any project in my life.
I also hired a virtual assistant and have been aggressive about firing off things to her rather than spending an hour or two chasing them down myself. I'll write it up after I have some results to show, but it has been a real stress saver to know that e.g. bookkeeping for January through October is now in the "being accomplished" pile rather than the "have to put it off to tomorrow because I've got code to write today" pile.
I Googled for VAs from the Philippines and picked a service which looked reasonable.
I'll be happy to recommend them after they produce recommendation-worthy results, but I'm barely started with her yet. The first task was only partially successful, but that wasn't her fault. (I had her cancel a service that I've had AOLesque difficulty canceling. They wouldn't talk other about it, but she did get a direct line to a CSR with cancellation authority for me to call, so I was done in two minutes on the phone instead of an hour.)
If she can reduce my bookkeeping backlog from ten hours to one, then I'll spend an hour singing their praises on my blog. (And then figure out some more grunt work to get rid of.)
I interviewed a few VAs from Philippines recently. But things did not take off from my end, I still have their contacts on records, if you want, drop me a note (see my profile).
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.
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.
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:
1. People will visit once, see that it's crap and never come back again, no matter what you do.
2. You will be overwhelmed by support requirements to the extent that all development stops.
3. You will be overwhelmed by support requirements to the extent that much support never gets addressed.
4. Your calendar becomes science fiction; everything has changed and it's a whole new ballgame.
5. The stress level will become so overwhelming for some of your people that you will simply lose them. Forever.
6. If you have taken people's money and not delivered, the guilt can become so overwhelming that it cripples you.
7. Your marathon has turned into a sprint you cannot finish. You have launched and lost.
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 too early early is just as bad as launching too late. 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.