So much pressure goes into sharing what you made with the world. Too often, startups think of launches as a one day affair. Growing momentum for your offering is a never ending challenge. Customer acquisition is an everyday grind. Nevertheless, making a splash matters. It’s validation. It’s a milestone. It’s shouting, “What-I-made-is-ready-to-use-and-I’m-a-decent-human-being-so-please-signup-now!” While I know a splash today can have benefits tomorrow, I emphasize that your company story evolves everyday — get out in front of it. Tell your story.
At Hacker Noon, we’re not trying to be Product Hunt, but below there are some great stories about getting the most out of Product Hunt and we did have the “best convo” with their founder Ryan Hoover. We hope he’ll contribute a story at some point. Thousands of other people have. That’s what we’re about: stories. It’s how we live, die, and make sense of why today isn’t perfect. It’s just what it is. Be honest about the state of your offering. Only nine people use your product? Build a better f*cking product. Or maybe you just need marketing? You have to give your story a shot to know if the problem is what you built, or who hasn’t heard of what you built. Either way you built something. Makers — and unfortunately, trust fund babies — run the world. If that something you built is shit, make it a good story about how and why and when it truly is shit. Maybe a trust fun baby will buy it? Or better yet, maybe another maker will be inspired by it? And then build something better. You can contribute a story about why your product launch matters, or just read and learn from these stories.
Practical Articles to Help With Your Product Launch
How Launching Early Helped Us Top Product Hunt by Todd Goldberg. This recent story is a good reminder of Matt Mullenweg’s advice: “Usage is like oxygen for ideas. You can never fully anticipate how an audience is going to react to something you’ve created until it’s out there.” Your early customers will affect your long-term product roadmap, so go out there and get some badass early customers.
From Launch to Raising US$1m to Closure in 3 Months by Miles Burke. Here’s how it’s done!
How We Acquired 26,447 Users and $207,152 in Sales on Product Hunt by Ankur Nagpal. These are big numbers!
PR 101 for Engineers by Aneel. This no bullshit guide can help any engineer market their technology.
4 Rules That Helped Me Launch 2 Products by Haim Pekel:
- Make a noise like you’ve never done before on social media and forums.
- Take everyone you know by the nose and lead them to vote and comment for you.
- Own a community before you launch.
- Have a list of relevant Journalists and send them an email about the launch, a day prior preferably.
Elijah Murray is building a new mini-startup every weeks. Damn! Ambition rules. Power to Elijah! Read this ongoing series.
My Biggest Failure by Joshua Taylor. There is so much to learn about what you can and can’t assume about your product and how people will use it.
Some of my thoughts as we launch Pepo today and I attempt to put the epic failure of my previous company behind me by Jason Goldberg. What you’ve done before will follow you, but it will not define your next offering. Read more of Jason’s story in On Rebound From Epic Failure & 3 Questions With.
Read more about product launches here.
Anyways, enough about product launches… here’s our ‘Top 10 Stories Over the Past Week’
The Bill Gates “Robot Tax” is as quaint as it is wrong by Kevin Zimmerman. If you haven’t heard Bill Gates wants to tax the robots that replace jobs… this author has a masters in taxation, and has some choice words to dispel this taxation of machines.
Margin or Padding? by Philipp Sporrer. This is the definitive post on, “When should I use margin? When should I use padding? Does it even matter?”
3 Slides You Absolutely Need In Your Pitch Deck by Harry Alford… it’s Team, Product, & Traction. These tips — from a venture capitalist’s perspective — are super helpful to making a deck worth investing in.
How I got your phone number through Facebook by Inti De Ceukelaire. This hack was able to extract the phone numbers of Belgian celebrities & politicians. In related news, Eugen’s response to Zuckerberg’s press release is “Facebook isn’t, and can never be, a platform where people have the power to build anything.”
Developers are unknowingly posting their credentials online. I chose to warn them instead of hacking them by @MisterCh0c. Posts like this are what Hacker Noon is all about. Great to read ideas and actions for developers to make a better internet for developers.
How I bypassed State Bank of India OTP by Neeraj Edwards. We drew some attention to a serious banking vulnerability.
7 Best Android Hacking Apps on the Internet Ever in 2017 by Harsh Sharma. All developers should be aware of these notorious apps in order to understand Android vulnerabilities and how they can in turn protect their users.
Discover the mathematician within you with this simple problem by Junaid Mubeen. Note: this post also includes a music animation machine!!
I developed an app for my wedding by Mauricio Meirelles. This is heartwarming. No Las Vegas wedding is complete without the virtual tossing of the bouquet.
Autonomous Boats By 2020 by Oliver Mitchell. Did you know that 75% of all boating accidents are the fault of human error, often the result of fatigue, and Rolls Royce thinks machine captained boats could one day rival their terrestrial counterparts on the speed of adoption and utility?? In related news, Alen Huskanović declaims that “the technology that can get us to Mars does not exist, yet.”
Until we meet again, don’t take the realities of the world for granted.
P.S. Read more in latest & trending.
P.P.S. You can contribute to Hacker Noon today!