How can anyone ever forget to launch? This sounds impossible, but it has certainly happened before. It\u2019s one of the most important days in the history of any company, and yet I\u2019ve seen this happen many times.<\/p>\n
Here are the four most common founders who forget to launch:<\/p>\n
The One More Feature Guy:<\/strong> Everything is built, tested, and launch-ready, but these people must add one more thing to the site or product that they feel will be \u201ccritical\u201d to their success.<\/p>\n The Busiest Person on the Planet:<\/strong> These founders are always multitasking and bogged down by their to-do lists, and their own launch sneaks up on them.<\/p>\n The \u201cWhat-if-my-baby-isn\u2019t-pretty-enough\u201d Founder:<\/strong> These people are afraid of rejection. They would rather not tell anyone what they\u2019re working on than face the \u201creal\u201d world with their product.<\/p>\n The Ultimate Dreamer:<\/strong> They are so jacked up on their own hype machine that they think they can just push their website live and they\u2019ll achieve maximum virality.<\/p>\n Bottom line: Getting your first 1,000 users is probably a lot harder than you think, and those users won\u2019t find your site just because you have a clever domain.<\/p>\n So what should you do? How can you avoid the same fate as our four friends above?<\/p>\n It\u2019s simple. You have to launch your product.<\/p>\n Your launch doesn\u2019t have to include some major launch party or a TechCrunch article. You don\u2019t even need to launch publicly. You just need to decide on a launch date with your team and make it happen \u2014 public, private, alpha, beta, call it whatever you want.<\/p>\n Once you launch, there is no going back. You can\u2019t unlaunch. After you launch, try to bring on as many users as you can, gather as much feedback as you can, and then make improvements based on that feedback.<\/p>\n Ok, so now that you\u2019ve committed to launch, it\u2019s not as simple as saying that you\u2019ve launched, right? Right. Now comes the difficult part. You have to get users, keep those users happy, make money, and run and grow a business.<\/p>\n It\u2019s really tough and there are no silver bullets, but I would make sure you have very solid answers to the following before launch:<\/p>\n Some of these questions seem so obvious, but founders struggle with them all the time. If you don\u2019t have a very specific customer in mind or you\u2019re unsure how you\u2019re going to find qualified leads, you will definitely need some help. Find a mentor, read some books, study everything you can about marketing, sales, and startup launches.<\/p>\n If you really want to know my secret to launching anything, it involves empathy.<\/p>\n At the end of the day, understanding the mindset of your customers is an important factor to launching your startup. Figure out how they\u2019re going to react to your company, what will stop them from buying, and how to get them to become loyal customers. Once you\u2019ve figured out your audience, you will be ready for launch!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" How can anyone ever forget to launch? This sounds impossible, but it has certainly happened before. It\u2019s one of the most important days in the history of any company, and yet I\u2019ve seen this happen many times. Here are the four most common founders who forget to launch: The One More Feature Guy: Everything is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1118,"featured_media":6981,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[43902],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-professional-development"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n\n