- Image by digitaltree515 via Flickr
Last week I hosted a group of NYC entrepreneurs who came out to hear from Steve Blank. It was a great event and I am working on getting the video online.
During the night Steve asked the audience a great question; “when did Google launch?”
It was met with blank stares as nobody really knew the answer.
The answer is that they never officially “launched”. Sure they opened up the product to a larger sample, but from the first index of sites, to the next 100,000, to the next 1,000,000 then just kept having people use the product. They outgrew their servers and office space and continued to grow the product. They iterated along the way and used the crawling of the web as a catalyst for growth and adding new hardware.
This has resonated with me and gives an important lesson; never launch, just iterate.
By launching you are setting yourself up for the inevitable drop off in users, interest, and clicks happening at your site. Yes, you can have a press cycle and let folks know at the same time what you are up to, but I believe that having a fixed date can be a detractor from your core mission.
By putting things out there in current form, iterating on feedback, putting the next product out there, then iterating again – puts you in a unique position of always having people using your product.
Although this may not work for everything, I think web services provide the perfect playground to see this in action. I see companies that line up press, users, bloggers, and hope the stars align for their “launch day” whereas they should be concentrating on a useful user experience.
Having an alpha, beta, or early access program (as Steve likes to call it) is great – but having your product being used is the important step.
So launch today, iterate tomorrow, and never have a reason why somebody new can’t get on the system right now.
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November 17th, 2009 at 9:56 am
I'm also a fan of the notion of decoupling the product launch from the marketing launch. Although, I guess the idea of 'never launch, just iterate' takes it one step further.
November 17th, 2009 at 9:57 am
This might be 50% psychology, because you do need “ship dates”, but I still
like it.
November 17th, 2009 at 10:10 am
Or you could phrase it as “launch continually” or launch every day
November 17th, 2009 at 10:12 am
Yes.
November 17th, 2009 at 10:30 am
Great point, Eric. We are thinking the same setup for our “launch” or “iteration” of our online marketplace for outdoor advertising.
John
ADstruc
http://www.adstruc.com
November 17th, 2009 at 10:32 am
I think its a good approach
November 17th, 2009 at 10:51 am
Nice post, Eric. Sounded like a great event. Wish I was able to attend.
Agree the focus should be almost entirely on getting people to use your product and getting their feedback. Everything else is a distraction.
November 17th, 2009 at 10:53 am
If you are not iterating on feedback – its feature bloat.
The event went really well and it was great to hear from Steve in person.
Hoping to share the video post in the next few days as it came out really
well.
November 17th, 2009 at 1:48 pm
That last line about never preventing someone from getting on the system right now reminds me of Fred's post on instant gratification the other day (http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2009/11/the-power-of-in...). Definitely important to always be on and always improving.
November 17th, 2009 at 1:51 pm
It is definitely very important
November 17th, 2009 at 2:00 pm
I love the idea of never launching and just iterating. This will still leave you room to have marketing announcements, etc., as Google does and others.
November 17th, 2009 at 2:00 pm
Also like the idea of decoupling product and marketing launches.
November 17th, 2009 at 2:40 pm
I wasn't able to attend the event, but in general I don't know if I agree 100% with this.
Arguably one of the hardest parts of product development is getting attention for your product. It's all nice and well to suggest that if you simply make a great product, it'll sell itself. But is that necessarily mutually exclusive from doing formal product launches?
Certainly things like iPhone apps live or die by their ability to generate press and buzz. Successful product launches are key. I don't think that having a product launch excludes you from *properly developing* a product and I think Yipit is an example of that.
I really like Vinny and Jim's strategy — a large but closed beta. They're iteratively improving the product and they'll know when it's time to launch the product when the usage and feedback levels meet their criteria. Until then, they're tinkering with it to get the formula right. Once it's right, they'll launch and hopefully get some press and WoM marketing. They'll have a heck of a better chance of capitalizing on that launch buzz because they're made sure the product is right. And similarly, they'll have a better chance of getting buzz if they do an actual product launch.
Just my 2cents!
November 17th, 2009 at 2:44 pm
I actually think what they are doing is the perfect example. If they
“launched” their product it would be totally different in 3-6 months. I
think they have opened the doors (soft launched) and are getting
usagefeedbackusers and then will do the press cycle later. You don't want
to waste your big press moments with a product that will change.
Its obviously different for every company, and the semantics can get you
dizzy, but the overall point I think we agree on is that getting people on a
service is always better than building it without many users for 18 months.
November 17th, 2009 at 4:15 pm
We at NIXTY couldn't agree with you more. The soft launch idea and ongoing iteration is much better than a Hollywood launch with steep declines in users. This is even more true if your launch doesn't go so well and you end up alienating a lot of potential users.
November 18th, 2009 at 9:45 am
This is a great post – classic Marketing.fm stuff. Concise and impactful!
November 19th, 2009 at 2:09 pm
It make more sense in web based product, we also adopted this strategy, it looked natural/obvious to us. I wrote a blog post after reading this
http://weddew.com/blog/2009/11/launching-strate...
November 19th, 2009 at 2:10 pm
thanks I will check it out
November 25th, 2009 at 6:27 am
Hi Eric thanks for sharing this “never launch, just iterate.” damn good point, Startups today need to understand that they can do something different and better by not going the traditional way of doing PR and related stuff, and yes Google has to be the best example even I thought for a while when did it launch but as I read over it never really happened.
December 11th, 2009 at 6:09 pm
Good advice for my wine club. Although we'll have something of an official launch with family and friends, we've already shipped 18 bottles of wine. Google “launched” from someone's garage which is pretty crazy to think about.
December 11th, 2009 at 6:12 pm
Always a good idea to show small groups
December 12th, 2009 at 12:09 am
Good advice for my wine club. Although we'll have something of an official launch with family and friends, we've already shipped 18 bottles of wine. Google “launched” from someone's garage which is pretty crazy to think about.
December 12th, 2009 at 12:12 am
Always a good idea to show small groups
May 17th, 2010 at 6:02 pm
Without technology marketing is not possible, Making a good marketing strategy technology is also need.
May 20th, 2010 at 8:56 am
good story. I think these events are memorable for a technical person
June 17th, 2010 at 12:02 pm
I liked the picture which has been used in this blog.
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