Your Web App has Launched – Now What?

I rode at least one '90s dot com into the ground on that first curve. Starting with something like $6M on day one, they staffed up, built the product over the course of a year, launched in August and hit the ground in September.

I'm following a somewhat flatter trajectory with FairTutor (my latest bootstrapped startup): Registered the domain a year ago, built a demo, spent 7 months traveling through South America talking to Spanish schools and building the product into something they'll be happy to use, filed down the sharp corners over the last month, and it should go live to paying users in about a week.

Still have about a year's worth of runway left to polish it into something good before it needs to start paying the bills.

I can't upvote this article enough. Perhaps I've seen too many friends put months into a startup, with no clear marketing / post-launch plan. The switch gets flipped, the site goes live, people patiently look at Google Analytics, and ... the users don't come. A couple of months later everyone gives up and goes back to devoting full attention to their day jobs that they never left.

That, and the article makes an important point -- if you don't have that many users, it doesn't necessarily mean that your service/app isn't valuable. Unless your product is incredibly niche, it most likely means that not enough people have heard about it yet. Get it out there!

I think I'm going to print out "coding is procrastination" and stick it to the top of my monitor.

The gratification with coding is short term - find a problem, think of a feature and get stuck in and get it done. When it works you get a nice glow of self satisfaction.

I don't know about others, but having the self-control to not open the code editor and do something else is probably the most difficult challenge I face in getting projects out there.

That's a good article, but these strategies should be thought-out BEFORE your app is launched. In fact, way before, like before you even start writing code.

Hey guys, Thanks for the all the nice words about my post - if you enjoyed it, you'll probably enjoy our Contrast blog (http://www.contrast.ie/blog)

Cheers, Des (@destraynor)

Wow, great article. I've been trying to think of how I can effectively bootstrap my company in about six months or so. Originally, I kind of deluded myself of by thinking I could build a SaaS app and I would start getting customers.

It's becoming more and more clear that the only way to get more revenue is to keep solving problems, charge for your solutions, and have patience. Easy to forget.

Great article but I would have to disagree with it saying that you need a budget for development after launch. What if the founders are hackers?