Ask HN: I don't know how to launch; I'm scared to. How do I follow through?

You have no successes, but you're 100% sure this product will take off like a rocket? That's not the way it works. Most people believe in their product, that's why they develop it and invest the long hours in the first place. However, you're only one person, and until that product sees the light of day and you get real feedback, you're living in a bubble.

I did the same thing once, and then never again. I developed a product for a year in my free time. Everything was finished, polished, all the features were fully developed, and it was ready to go. What happened? I 'launched', a handful of users registered, there were a dozen posts, and that was it. Only in that moment, did I realize it wasn't that great of an idea in the first place, and how absurd it was to invest a year of my time before getting feedback from my target audience.

What I do now is try to launch asap. I get a rough concept up and running, and launch in a weekend, a week, or a month. I developed one site over the course of 48 hours (from idea to working beta), launched, and it had 2,000 registered users in less than a day. It still failed a year later. I launched another site after a month of development, and that one had 3,000 users the first day, and now it has a million and continues to grow.

By not launching, you're wasting time. There's a 95%+ chance the product is going to fail, you'll get a tiny spike of traffic day one from your marketing, and that'll be the most traffic you ever see. That's why you should launch asap. If you invest a few weeks, and it fails, that's great, you proved the idea doesn't work, and you move onto the next. You can launch a dozen products and services in a year this way, identify the failures, and when one appears to gain traction, then you can flesh it out more. I don't think my site had a FAQ until it had 25k+ users, a support section until it had 50k+ users. It didn't get a ToS until it had 500k+ users. Launching is a good way to validate the core idea, before you invest all the time in the extras.

First off, you are not alone in Minnesota. There is a thriving startup community in MN but it's not as easy to find as in the Bay Area. Poke around and I am sure you'll find people to connect with.

Second, as Gustamaximus said, you are obviously scared to be proven wrong or fail. That is natural. None of us want to experience the disappointment of believing in something so badly we spend months working on it and then discover no one wants what we built.

Other scary thoughts in your head right now probably...

What if the launch results in a big NOTHING??!! No users, no interest, just nothing. Paid google click traffic that just moves on after spending a split second on your front page.

Even worse...what if there is a bug in your code and you accidentally charge your first user a million dollars on their credit card instead of your modest 10 dollars a year subscription fee and they Tweet their 100,000 followers how much your service sucks?! You will never get user #2 and your service will be dead within 5 minutes!

Yeah...these things could happen...but, most likely not.

All the difficult work is all ahead of you. Marketing, sales, retention, customer service, bug fixing, re-positioning, competitors etc etc.

The launch is a non-event compared to all that's still ahead of you.

You're right. It is a mental block. It's usually one you get when you believe that what you've made is going to take off like a rocket. Whether or not it does, now that pressure is on you.

Pick one of them. Launch it. See it through a few iterations, because (spoiler alert!) it won't be perfect at the beginning. What you launch will probably not get traction. If you've never launched anything before, you won't believe me. But this is both a liberating and terrifying thing, so it's important to accept that you will fail to live up to your hopes.

The more you're convinced that you won't fail, the less you'll risk actually failing at something. The more you'll fall back on your conviction of being smart enough to delay launch. The more you'll build features instead of launching shit to make things that people will use.

Today, say to yourself that you will adapt. That the biggest adventure is yet to come, and that you don't know what will happen, but even then, you will face every challenge down.

Then tomorrow, JUST FUCKING LAUNCH IT.

Probably not the most constructive long-term strategy, but try getting really drunk and launch it.

Every time a new user discovers your service, that is your launch date. So you'll have a series of them. The more you build "launching" into something big the more expectations you will have around it.

The really hard thing is marketing -- getting people to know and then care about your service. Get the tech stuff out of the way and move onto this. It is hard. The first people who use your service will give you invaluable feedback.

Stick a BETA on it somewhere and go live ASAP.

Sounds like the fear might be related to attachment to the outcome. But with a lot of things in life, you can't really be too attached to the outcome, at least not initially. As things gain traction and develop (rapidly or otherwise) then you can invest more of yourself in the desired outcome.

My favourite quote in recent memory is Markus Frind, of Plenty of Fish fame. I'm paraphrasing here, but he says launch something that just sort of works and then take it from there.

But it seems like you're well beyond the point of something that just works at a minimum, so I'd say don't worry about anything beyond getting these products out. A lot of people don't even get to the point of having something to launch for a variety of reasons, both internal and external.

Are you scared these will fail? Perhaps tell yourself the success is the launch. Anything good after that is gravy.

Alternately, pretend a competitor is coming out with a similar service and it's a race to go live...

I know this is a gross oversimplification but it seems your overthinking it and need to do.

If you have all the code ( product ) why don't you launch ? what is your biggest fear. you already did a lot of the work don't be afraid to fail. if you fail you will fail fast and that is good. Don't be afraid of failure embrace it.

Launch a launching site with a countdown or a date at least, definitely easier to do mentally, and it will force you when the time is up.

As other said, don't launch both at the same time, don't focus too much on "will it work", for "completely finished" product it's no longer the right time.

I'd try to review your expectation: -- One of them will take off like a rocket and I'm convinced of it That's giving you too much pressure, just wait, see and iterate accordingly.

Doing a closed launch before the actual release date is another thing that can help feel "everything is really ready to go".

> ...I've never been more convinced of anything in my lifetime actually.

Any time you feel like this, assume it's self-delusion because it probably is.

Stop worrying so much about failing and just expect to fail a lot, then it won't seem so scary. Launch this thing. Try to make it work. Then work on something new that genuinely interests you more. Follow your interests and work hard.

You are going to fail, but if you don't give up, you are also going to succeed.

Who are you target audience for this product that will take off like a rocket? Where do they hangout online, that you can share your launch with them? In forums? Social Media? If you have an email list of subscribers, send them the link... Flip the switch, share the link on here.

Not launching = failure = not a bad thing, but just learn from it and launch!

p.s There are a lot of people alone in this world.

If you launch than it might go good or might not. Unless you try you will never know. It's being good if you fail as it will let you know what are your mistakes and what should I do not do. Improved your product by feedback. Second edit your post and show the work. Really want to know what you have done. Here we can give feed back and you can start to launch from this post.

The product is built. Stop dilly-dallying and over thinking things, have conviction. Why build it if you're going to let it sit there and not do anything with it? If you're afraid of failure, not launching is the same as failing, except without any of the lessons learned.

Stop reading these comments, get off HN, and LAUNCH THE DAMN THING, fuck breakfast.

Why don't you just put it only and invite your friends first (and tell no one else about it) to see how that goes? Then start inviting your other acquaintances. If that works out well, start marketing it to the public.

That's because dreaming about a business is easy, planning a business is fun and running a business is a lot of hard work and BS. just post the site and get feedback.

I think you should be scared only if you feel you are not ready and users won't like your service, or may be you need a co-founder to get things going.

I hope you launch after reading all these encouraging notes. Will you please let us know how it goes?

Well, you already consumed your time to develop these products, right?

So what do you have to loose? I mean, could you write what you think you will loose?

This is a classic problem and you're not alone. The solution is usually quite simple.

I work with people like you all the time in my coaching business.

Allow me to show you the light at the end of the tunnel.

A comment box isn't going to do this justice, so email me at Joe at thesuperhumanproject.com and I'll help you through this.

For the good of the community, we can do a write up of what we discussed or we can keep it private. It's up to you.