Launching

Did you ever own an Amazon Fire Phone? Probably not, and most people do not even know that Amazon tried to compete in the mobile phone market. I barely remember it because as soon as it was launched, it just as quickly disappeared.

It was one of the all-time worst product flops in the history of tech and a rare miss by Jeff Bezos. By some estimates, Amazon sold fewer than 100,000 units. For context, Apple sold 10 million iPhone 6 phones in its opening weekend the same year that the Fire Phone was released. Amazon quietly killed their phone less than a year later.

For Amazon, it was a temporary blip in a string of uninterrupted successes. They can afford the occasional miss given that it is a two trillion dollar market cap company and the fourth largest company in the world. They even celebrate the failures with a display board in one of their Seattle offices called the  “Hall of Failure”.

Then there is the story of the Rabbit R1. It was one of the most buzz worthy launches at CES 2024, ushering in the trend of AI wearable pins. The video of the launch went viral, selling 10,000 units in the first 24 hours and 130,000 units soon after that. The buzz soured pretty quickly though as reviews trashed the product and users eventually stopped using it. While the company is still operating, its reputation and credibility will take a long time to repair.

While some overhyped startups can survive like Rabbit or get acquired like Humane AI, many never recover. The expectations are so high that it is easy to stumble even if you do all the right things leading up to and during the launch. Once customers use the product and the experience does not match up to the value that was sold, they lose trust, abandon the product, and never return.

Big launches setup startups for failure right out the gate. The focus goes into creating the best launch instead of building the best product and speaking to the right customers. The launch becomes the product and even if the launch itself is successful, the product suffers because the launch rarely generates the type of customers that will stick around.

A big launch says to the world you have a product that is ready to go big time. You invest in the Product Hunt debut, ping all your network about upvoting the launch, setup the social media posts to go generate interest, tease something on Hacker News, and do all the PR for the announcement. Then when you do go live, you generate lots of interest, your posts get shared, your launch gets to number one on PH, and you see the sign-ups rolling in. After a few days though, the hype wears off and most of those sign-ups go dormant.

Why? Because your product was not ready for prime time. You promised one thing, but the experience offered something much less useful or memorable. In a world awash with apps and software, if you do not hit the mark right off the bat with initial users, they will turn their attention elsewhere.

Most initial products are simply ideas loosely cobbled together into the shape of something that is barely useable. For all the talk about creating a “lovable” first iteration and putting lots of care into the first release, most products at launch suck. The feature set is limited, things break often, the onboarding is convoluted, the design is amateurish, along with a million other things that simply do not meet user expectations. MVPs (minimally viable product) work not because they are perfect, but because the viable part solves enough of a pain point now to get early customers hooked on the future promise of the product.

Now my focus and experience is with B2B software. There may be situations and markets where big launches make sense like gaming and consumer tech. In the world of business software though, the big launch is rarely the most optimal strategy to advance your goals as a startup.

What exactly is the purpose of a launch and why the huge emphasis on the need to have an official launch? Because a launch can quickly generate lots of brand awareness that brings in leads or users. For B2B startups though, most of the leads or sign-ups generated in the typical launch do not fit that their ideal customer profile. Unless you are specifically selling to other startups, most buyers do not religiously read TechCrunch or hang out on Product Hunt or obsessively searching for new tech launched on Twitter.

If the purpose of a launch is to get leads, the better strategy is to reach out to customers where they hang out. If your market is developers, you are on GitHub and Hacker News. If your market is dentists, there are dental associations. If you are selling to general business personas like HR or accounting or marketers, many of them are on LinkedIn. Once you find your ideal customers, you can then reach out directly to them.

Cold outreach scares most startup founders. It shouldn’t though because you are doing the hardest thing of all, starting a business from the ground up. Also if you are actively solving a real problem for businesses, people will listen to your pitch if you do so in a manner that is respectful and collaborative. This means as a founder, you got to learn to sell.

I am going through the process of launching my startup which I announced over LinkedIn this week. It is not a product launch, but moving from stealth mode to my new company branding, website, and name, TribeROI. Thanks for everyone that liked the post and sent me a note congratulating me. One question I have received is whether the product is ready and why there are no screenshots or demos available? The product is not something that will be ready for at least several months, so why announce something now?

I believe strongly in the idea of shipping small, iterative launches continuously. This week I launched the first iteration of the TribeROI website, which will be a key asset when I reach out to potential customers for my community consulting services and to be design partners for developing the product. However, the website in its current form is very basic, very wordy, and quite honestly not very informative. It is simply the starting point to get critical feedback from my trusted network on whether the value proposition and messaging is clear. I now have nearly 20 pages of comments that will help me refine the messaging and launch a more robust version 2 of the website in the next few weeks.

The process of shipping iteratively is also helping me to learn at a faster pace and open up more opportunities. There were some basic things that I simply neglected to include in the pre-released website like pages for the Privacy Statement and Terms and Conditions. I had many excellent questions that challenged key assumptions about my buyer and their level of understanding for the need to measure community. Then there were some people that saw some useful introduction they could make on my behalf to customers and partners.

Some things are harder to ship iteratively, like when I publishing my book Community-in-a-Box in March. I still took time to seek feedback on the book cover and invite a small number of trusted connections to read and comment on the book before I released it. That ensured that the book that was released was a much stronger and higher quality product.

For TribeROI, this is the first of many future mini-launches. This is a more viable strategy that leverages my existing network and mechanisms that builds awareness and helps me collect vital feedback without adding too much extra work. Ultimately this is where you want to be as a founder, having a method in place that helps increase your bandwidth for additive tasks like building the product and engaging with customers.

How do you go about launching new products or businesses? What are some of the key strategies and tactics that have been successful for you when launching?

Mark Birch

I am in Poland this week for the first stop in my Europe tour and had the awesome experience of attending and participating in the regular Thursday Gathering at the Venture Café Warsaw. The event is hosted by the CIC Warsaw, one of a global network of startup and innovation spaces established by Cambridge Innovation Centre.

What made the event extra special for me was seeing that Startup Terrace Taiwan was also at the event this week with about fifteen Taiwanese startups on a tour of Poland. They are here to network, seeking market expansion opportunities, and collaborate with local partners. Last night, they had the opportunity to give three-minute pitches to an audience of Polish entrepreneurs and investors, and it was great to see the positive reception from the judges and the audience.

I was super excited for my talk as well. I was planning to have a fireside chat with my friend Piotr Boulange on building and scaling your startup. Instead, it ended up being an interactive talk about building communities and answering questions from the audience. Thanks Piotr for reading the room and adjusting things to make it a valuable session for all. I ended up being one of the last people out the door of the CIC still taking questions from folks!

I have another talk at the CIC Warsaw tonight, then preparing for Finland from May 11-14 and Estonia from May 14-17. If you are in either place next week (Helsinki or Tallinn), please reach out. I would love to meet up in person and we may have some open 42Geeks events I can invite you to!