Marketing.fm – Eric Friedman

No startup wants to end up in the deadpool and failing gracefully does not necessarily mean cleaning up the mess when things go wrong. Instead, there are ways to fail in the beginning that can lead to success in the future of a small company.

Failing gracefully means recognizing that when your app first launches you will probably not be a good solution for most users and not be fully functional and ready for 90% of users right away.

This can be looked at in two ways or two opportunities:

1. A common unavoidable issue that you cannot get around until you build that feature or implement that use case.

OR

2. You can embrace this opportunity and fail gracefully.

This means going well beyond the typical 404 page (although it is important) and answering the call when someone arrives at a feature that is not built yet or a topic that is not filled out just yet. Better yet, if someone searches for something on your page – auto populate their intent into your template and ask for feedback or for them to “claim” that page and build it out later.

There are any number of ways you can answer the query of when you can’t deliver what was intended and they are all better than having a bad “404″ page or a typical “coming soon” page.

Failing gracefully can mean the difference between a user coming back in the future or losing them forver.

I have been subscribing to the Lean Startup and Minimum Viable Product schools of thought recently and this post came from a catalyst discussion at the NY Lean Startup meetup.

I have come across services that show features coming soon by either showing screens as .jpg’s that dont work, or by asking users what they want to see in these upcoming areas. Both are opportunities to keep people coming back for more in the future.

So when you are in the launch early and launch often process, remember fail gracefully.