Ask HN: Should I launch anyway if unhappy about my product?

[mattbell]

I've been working on my startup full-time for 13 months now. (http://taketake.com)

I can't seem to nail that design - that feeling I'm looking for. We've changed the UI and the design roughly 5 times now. 6 months ago I stumbled on the Lean Startup philosophy; the launch early, scrappy and iterate doing customer development. I kept telling myself that I will launch in a few weeks so it was too late to "start from scratch" and apply the Lean Startup idea. But it's been 6 months now and I can't seem to get out of this stupid cycle of me being unhappy and wanting to have everything perfect before I launch.

Because of this, other startups like Blippy, Swipely (and gdgt to some extent) beat me to the push. My reaction when I saw this was to try harder and build features they don't have - so that when I launch our site we would one-up them.

Now I feel like I was wrong. I should have launched months ago and done more customer development to make sure I'm not building something people won't care about.

Somehow it is so difficult for me to release something that is not perfect. I can hear Gary V. telling me to "quit the bitch train" and launch already.

At this point I have three competitors; gdgt, Blippy and Swipely. They've got big launches with lots of PR attention and now getting traction while I'm losing my time pixel by pixel.

I guess I'm scared of failing and don't want to launch because of that - or I'm trying to pull a Steve Jobs with the resources of a non-VC backed startup.

Should I just take my time and release when I'm happy about my product and not care about my competitors getting traction - or should I hurry to get in the market to get my piece of the pie asap?

Your thoughts are appreciated :)

[malbiniak]

Launch...but don't blow your wad on marketing until you think you're ready. If you're not confident in it, I'm not sure how you're going to sell it. A small launch within your network could get you the feedback you're looking for.

Don't beat yourself up about Blippy, gdgt, and Swipely. What did they do right? What did they do wrong? What can you learn from them (and on their dollar)? And -- are they REALLY your competitors?

Two last comments. If your design is on the level of your blog design, you'll be fine. It's really clean with clear and concise messaging. Also, have you considered the widening "products you love" into "things you love?" I'm being selfish, but I'd love to be able to follow new "products" from "things I love," like bands. Forget that last thought :)

[mattbell]

Yeah the idea of releasing the site but "not launching it" (thinking of marketing launch here) sounds like a good idea. Perhaps doing an invite only on Hacker News could get me the feedback needed to tune things up for the marketing launch thereafter.

I like the idea of "things I love" - see? That's why I need to get our site out there and get some feedback! Cheers!

[damoncali]

LAUNCH IT NOW, MAN!

It will never be perfect. Ever.

You shouldn't be afraid of failing. This is not a one shot game. Your launch will show you some areas where you did things right and some where you screwed the pooch. It's about never ending improvement, not a shot in the dark that results in binary success or failure.

But one thing is certain - you need users to improve. You can't do that by yourself. So put away the IDE, and start pounding the pavement for users. There will be plenty of time later for improvements.

So yeah, you are right. You should have launched months ago. But who cares? Learn and move on.

You won't have any users right away anyhow, so relax and enjoy the process.

[mattbell]

You're right. This is not a one shot game. It is something that I will keep working on. Somehow after all this time has passed, it's embarrassing to launch a minimum viable product because people will say "Oh, that's it?". But that's just in my head and need to get over my fears. Cheers!

[marknutter]

Launch it. The name of the game is GETTING USERS. The sooner you begin that process, the more you'll have in the long run. Even if you only have 5 dedicated, hardcore users, if the product works well for them they will evangelize and spread the word for you. Right now, you're killing that word-of-mouth opportunity by keeping your app private.

LAUNCH IT. When you do, you'll be surprised at how anti-climactic it is and wonder why you spent so much time worrying about it. The reason why you can launch early is because you don't have the same PR blitzes the bigger guys do. Grow slowly, steadily, and introduce the features your users are asking for the most. If you have the staying power, you have a real shot overcoming the other guys, especially since they have to be the ones who make the first major mistakes (think Blippy's PR nightmare a few months back).

Good luck!

[mattbell]

Thanks for the feedback. One of the things that has been keeping me back from launching is this idea that I've got "only one shot at making the first impression".

I'm coming to realize that while the above statement is true, there are other things at play too. Cheers!

[Mc_Big_G]

You'll be more unhappy that you wasted so much time than you are unhappy with the product. You'll feel really dumb if you waste all that time perfecting something no one cares about. Trust me, I know.

[mattbell]

I hear you, I'm at that point now where I'm embarrassed by all the time I've wasted. Thanks for the feedback, cheers!

[andyhin]

Matt,

You need to launch - now. I was in a similar position a few years ago with one of my first startups. We spent months on development even though we had a usable product done very quickly. We analyzed our competitors, and constantly tried to one-up them while hiding in stealth mode. We were never completely happy with the product, as it seemed to always be missing some feature. Feature creep hit, and we spent another few months developing.

This proved to be a big mistake. The problem here is that we tried to predict how our users would use our product, wasting tons of time developing features we thought potential users would like (we didn't have any actual users at this point). This took our product in the wrong direction - when we launched it seemed users didn't use it the way we intended - most of the features were never used.

In hindsight, instead of spending time predicting and implementing features that would never be used, we should have just launched the product and evolved the way users ACTUALLY use it.

[mattbell]

Thanks for sharing this with me, it's very helpful. We have a lot of guessing going on, and you're right; we should wait to see how users will want to use the site and get feedback before building stuff people might not care about. Cheers!

[thinker]

Looking at your demo, you definitely have a launch-worthy v1. Do it now!

I think you're sufficiently differentiated from Blippy and Swipely, and even if you aren't - so what? How many people outside of HN and the Valley know of these two startups? There's a ton of users to acquire and engage and you are by no means behind in the game.

I really liked your gallery implementation - did you build it from scratch?

[mattbell]

That demo was shot like 12 months ago. I think we've changed the design/UI 3 times since then. It's silly, I know. I'm coming to realize that I'm sabotaging my own startup with my fears of launching.

The gallery implementation we built ourselves... That's something we sure spent a lot of time on. In hindsight, it could have been built after seeing how many people use that feature and if it is needed or not. Thanks for the feedback, cheers!

[dennisgorelik]

Launch: 1) You would get feedback from users. 2) You would get motivation from users to develop new features. 3) You would get the sense of accomplishment. 4) You would get running production web site experience.

If you get no feedback at all (which is a bad sign) -- it's still good for you -- move on to the next idea.

[mattbell]

Motivation sure is tougher to come by when my co-founder and I have been on this for 13 months full-time pulling 12+ hours a day on this. Even if I had only 5 users I think it would motivate me like nothing else. Thanks for the feedback, cheers!

[babobear]

I just took at look at your demo and I think it's a really cool idea, and you have a clean, attractive UI. It seems pretty different from Blippy or Swipely though actually - more focused on products rather than an individual's transactions.

Go for it and just launch! I would love to use it.

[rbanffy]

I think the key is to either succeed or fail fast and cheap. In order to do that, you should launch early.

[mattbell]

I came across this idea of if you have to fail, fail fast and early. If our thing doesn't fly I will have learned this the hard way for sure. Thanks for the feedback, cheers!

[LeBlanc]

What matters more than whether you are happy or not is whether your users are happy or not. One thing you could try is to launch to a select number of users (generally friends and family) and get their feedback before launching to the general public.

[dennisgorelik]

No need to intentionally restrict users. Simply promote your web site to your closest friends first and later focus on promoting it to broader audience.

[coryl]

I certainly hope the video demo posted 10 months ago is FAR from what you're doing now: http://vimeo.com/6340992

[mattbell]

It is! Is that good or bad? I don't know. I guess I need to launch it to find out. Thanks for the feedback, cheers!

[fezzl]

I actually like the idea very much. You should launch already!

[mattbell]

Hey thanks! I think we will have something up for the Hacker News peeps to play around with and get that important feedback we crave. Thanks for the feedback, cheers!

[herdrick]

Launch.

[one010101]

Keep going! You can't sell something you don't believe in! But don't try to make the v2.0 version before launching. Make sure v1 is something your identified customers will want and shove it out the door.

[mattbell]

I think you're right about selling something you don't believe in and/or want to use. In retrospect, I don't think that's the case with our product - but rather me not being able to build it to my expectations. What I realize now is that it's something I can iterate on to get to market fit (and my expectations fit). Thanks for the feedback, cheers!