It's important to note that eventhough you should launch early, your product should work well and have a real benefit. too often i see startups launchs with a half-baked idea.
"Don't launch with a crappy product -- launch as soon as what you have is better than what is out there." If I remember correctly, that is advice given by Paul Buchheit.
hang out with PB for 10 minutes and you'll hear 10 things that make you say "aha". you've got to be humble enough to realize that you don't know everything, and you won't necessarily stumble upon every realization on your own.
e.g. Hearing someone talking about fear is entirelly different from living it on your own.
The same goes for many stages in a startup. If you don't experience it, any advice in the world will not matter.
I wouldn't be here if I thought I knew everything, but If you/I expect someone else to tell you how to understand if your product is ready then you lost already.
For example if you want me to be more precise.
In the certain advice everything is obselete and relative.
What is the competition? Have they already launched? How easy will be for them to just replicate you and crush you? When do you know you are better from the competition? What would make sure you will avoid crushing you?
All these questions relative to that advice are so crucial that makes the advice broad enough unless you are already experiencing that pressure and already have the realization of the market you are trying to enter etc.
Thats why advices are meaningless until you experience them.
You need to value the essence of the advice, not always upon who gives it.
You will get many good advices from many people if you don't undervalue them.
i'm still a bit confused by your point, but advice has been very helpful for us. generally, the person giving advice tries to formulate their advice in such a way that it applies to more than just one situation. advice seems to be most useful when it applies directly to a situation you're currently dealing with. but maybe i'm missing your point entirely.
that was exactly my point, the advice was valuable because it was applicable relative to what you are experiencing.
the advice is not as important by who is said, as much if the person giving it is identifying what to tell you relative to your current experience. Otherwise any other advice will not matter.
very true, but it does matter who gives the advice: some people give bad advice that sounds good on the surface, but isn't. you always need to follow your gut, and listen to all advice no matter who gives it, but we always listen especially carefully to people who have dealt with our situation and been successful.
Quote: the "build it and they will come" mentality is a fallacy. You need to build something great and have distribution in order to succeed. And distribution is hard to get.
I built a great social networking website, but there were problems with just about everything (including a programmer that had a nervous breakdown and quit, one that had a heart attack and quit, one that got pregnant and quit, a change in the law that made our business model obsolete, etc. etc) We launched just for the hell of it, but didn't follow through on it. I think there are around 50 users now...
Upmodded for unintentional hilariousness. Are you sure a plague of locusts didn't also descend upon your programmers? Note to self: never accept a programming job from mixmax.
Really bad luck would have been, if the one who suffered the stroke had not quit but gone into hospital while you still had to pay him.
In the office near to mine is also a collegue who brings her baby every day. While she is there in principle, she does not work a lot, but starts to develop a strong sense to control everything. If these people stay, thats really bad luck.
GREAT post! Absolutely awesome (and inspiring, given that we are in the 100-300 signups per day camp at RescueTime).
I would throw in my omnipresent "think viral, if you can". Viral stuff doesn't easily translate to all businesses, but I literally know 3 or 4 guys who have gone the "build it and they will come" route with blog widgets and facebook apps. If you build a blog widget that people want, you can pretty much just sit back and watch customers accumulate (not that you SHOULD).
Of course, monetizing businesses like that is another story. And because it's so easy, it's crowded as hell. But if you can add a sprinkle of virality (like the "Proudly powered by Weebly. Create a free website." on the footer of weebly sites) that's a big deal.
I have found that it can be hard to watch a similar product with half the features growing faster than your own. I guess it means your in a good space that people are interested in, but you aren't doing enough to attract those users...
My co founder read the book, so I haven't picked it up. I understand that keeping things simple and easy can be really important. We have been focusing on simplifying and usability for the past couple weeks, because we saw how many users were having a hard time using the site. Our usability tests have been paying off really well.
I remember reading a study (can't find it right now) that actually tried to investigate how good your product had to be to attract users without marketing. Their finding was that if your product is 200 - 300% better than what is already there you will win. Google fits that description pretty well.
Most startups have to be 10X (1000%) along a dimension of interest to be able to break through. Because you will be weaker in other areas, you normally can't compete across the board with existing players as a startup, you don't have the resources. You have to pick your battles. See Kathy Sierra's post "How to come up with breakthrough ideas"
http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2005/1...
exactly right. good publicity and a bad product wouldn't help anything. and if you notice the "new users per day" graph, it settles higher after every publicity hit -- which is a good indication that your product is of value, since the more people that know about you, the more that tell other people about you, the more sign-up for your product every day.
and on a side note, it's also much harder to get good publicity for a bad product.
Good and timely advice. We have been launched for 6 weeks or so, and seeing our growth grow slower than we would have liked. It is good to know other start ups that are doing well, had a pretty slow intial growth for awhile. I guess that means it is time to put a bit more effort into PR and engineering some viral features.
