How To Go From Idea To Launching With Paying Customers In 8 Steps
jasonlbaptiste.com
jasonlbaptiste.com
Typically, if you're a hands-on person with the right attitude sooner or later you'll figure this part out. Posts like this can help you ease the pain a bit but then what?
You've just launched, you have a few paying customers (but not enough to be profitable), your initial press powder has been shot. Traffic collapses to near non-existent levels and your first customers do not seem to be going out of their way to tell their friends about your product.
That's a much harder problem to solve than just to get to the launch date.
Launching something is like a marriage, the first honeymoon period with a new fledgling company.
If it works out during the 'dating' period you might end up marrying the wrong company, or it may be the right one but it will require skills and expertise that you do not have that go way beyond coding or talking to your existing circle of potential customers.
That's when the real work starts. Getting to launch is the easy bit.
The articles are ok though (but quite a few got posted here as well).
But the discussion is just about non-existent. I've gotten a bit wary of HN split-offs, they tend to be very short-lived.
I don't know what the main reason for that is, possibly it is simply that HN is 'good enough' and that a splinter of it does not carry enough volume for long term sustainability.
The comments will come with time; right now there aren't many contributors, but the site has been around long enough and been updated frequently enough that I believe it will stick around. HN was kind of slow moving when it started, too (although not that slow, to be honest).
I can't speak for anyone else but I come to HN to be informed and inspired. There's so much potential here that is lost on pointless debates.
Aren't we all in the same boat here, trying to reach a distant goal?
It matters how much effort you are putting into marketing - SEO, Blogging, Affiliates, SEM, Display ads, PR, Retargeting, A/B Testing (& direct mail, telemarketing if they're the right fit for your product)...
Testing & optimizing these before launch is critical to gaining a steady flow of traffic & customers. If you don't do this & focus only on the "launch post" on TC/Mashable/TNW/RRW then you can easily fall flat after launch, otherwise you definitely have a fighting chance.
I've run e-commerce ops with $15k+ in revenue from "month one".
Making $15k in revenue from HDTVs might mean you are in trouble. Then you take into consideration costs of direct marketing, telemarketing, display ads, SEM, etc., and you may be in a really tough spot.
However, if you make $15k in the first month for a scalable software product, then you are in a good position to start growing.
I think it's not so much about the launch, but about your first 10 or 100 customers. Regardless of the TC/M!/RRW/HN posts, if you manage to get 100 or even 10 customers, you already have mitigated a lot of the risks that make companies fail: Finding someone that will pay for your product.
I think it was on a steve blank presentation that said something along the lines of:
The reason of why most companies fail, 90% of the time, is not their technology but failure to find paying customers.
Thus, if you launch AND you have paying customers, it means you must be doing something right. Launching alone does not mean anything.
I was talking about low cost goods, like toasters, hand vacs, etc - avg ticket of $75-150
So freemium really worked for us in getting through that post-launch desert plain. Aside from the cost of supporting the free users, our out-of-pocket advertising expense has been <$100 since the start of the company to present day.
The one thing I feel it's missing is the major step of vetting an idea. Is it WORTH doing? I literally get cold emails every day from entrepreneurs who say, "I've spent a big chunk of my life building this thing and none of the ways I've found to acquire customers is working in a scalable way" (they generally don't word it that way, but you get the gist). It's gut-wrenching.
Maybe that's a different post, but if you're building a startup for growth, you could be running that company for years (remember, avg. time to liquidity for a venture-backed startup is 8.7 years!). You should be careful to chase ideas that aren't merely viable but GREAT market opportunities (or at least products/markets that you LOVE). It's easier to swim downstream.
I think you're right-- it's a big topic and people have radically different frameworks ranging from "I just want some side income" to "I eventually want my own island". The biggest thing that seems to trip people up is figuring out (before they build it!) if there's a way to scalably acquire customers. Unless people have a well-understood distribution channel they can tap and an ARPU obviously high enough to buy customers through it, entrepreneurs generally have to hustle (sell 1 customer at a time, beg for coverage, write targeted linkbait, etc). And hustling doesn't scale. Hell, with some products/markets, it doesn't work at all.
What you do need is a defined documentation of your internal/public API's. If the developers don't know how modules talk to one another that's a recipe for fail. Then just to keep everything coherent, a rough skeleton to keep everyone on track. Basically a mix between your step 2 and step 5.
But keeping an insanely good db documentation and a bunch of other stuff feels like overkill.
Disclaimer - Ripped off from my favorite Douglas MacArthur Qoute:
"I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable."
Some choose to completely ignore competition; I personally find it important to have a bit of an overview.
Also, Jason, for an app (padpressed) that promises increased usability, the text on the homepage is awfully hard to read. Here's how it renders in Chrome for OS X:
On that note, anyone interested in helping us with StartMetrics (http://startmetrics.com)?
It's a service that tracks lean startup metrics for SaaS products. We're currently inviting folks to sign-up for the beta test when it's available. We'll also be sending a few customer development surveys.
Public mudslinging is to nobody's benefit.
My opinion of him is not one worth discussing here.
I think that would be a more valuable contribution to the discussion.