Controversial opinion: Release late and release rarely

The article assumes that once you release, people will see your product and talk about it. But why would anybody talk about an unfinished product? In practice releasing to the public is a gradual process. The few customers you might turn off in the beginning are worth the feedback you will receive.

Of course, you will have the WoM when you release the product, but exactly the readiness of the product to be released is what creates the content of WoM, whether it is bad or good, and what effect it will have on the future of your brand.

There is a train of though that follows the Starbucks approach to scale where it's understood one bad experience will lose you a customer but many consistent mediocre experiences will become a habit. This is largely how corporate software works. It's not great, but it's not offline or something else catastrophic. But if you are a scrappy startup trying to get market share you probably don't have the luxury of slow gradual market growth. Hence the agile approach. Moving fast and breaking stuff in order to get a foot in the door.

Airbnb launched multiple times. There is no 'one release'

There is a difference between releasing to your target customer and releasing to a larger audience.

I am building a real estate tech company where I can reach my target customer through offline channels, including my network. I can release early and often with them without needing to communicate with the rest of the world. It's like a stealth startup, but it isn't really. I am working with customers, focusing on where my product will get the highest ROI.

Your job as a startup builder is to prove that i) your customers can use your product ii) your customers want to use your product iii) your customers will pay to use your product. Anything else is noise.

Release late and release rarely, and then miss the target need and invest a lot of money and time to fix it.

It is a post an old post from 2006, when things were different on consumer and developer side, but i think the writer forgot to address two things during his developments:

1. MVP/Prototype Phase: Here you should focus on the extreme users and early adopters of the industry. They care about the product itself and not about bugs. They are the ones who will even give you good unsolicited feedback and won't call it junk.
2. Communication: You have to communicate clearly that it is an MVP and that it is still in the testing phase. This way, you will land fewer customers in the beginning, but later you will have close contact with the important extreme users who will drive the product forward.

If you are building mobile apps, I am becoming more and more inclined with Jordan Morgan's philosophy of YOLO
You only launch once
This is because the conditions needed to create an install, the first task and then to share/refer is pretty hard to nail on an ongoing basis. Architecting momentum helps.

My own experience with 6000 thoughts https://apple.co/3TNZCEa has been to think of releasing one version without thinking its a beta (so that its not a crappy MVP full of bugs - cos then what are you even measuring) and then release the one solid version that you can really get behind and start working on distribution.

It sounds pretty waterfally but as a solo indie you have only so many hours in a day.

There is a chance that you will miss your target if you release anything late that is needed in real time .

Releasing frequently indicates that either you are really intelligent and have created a product that doesn't need any updating or that you don't want to adapt to a changing world.

I think you make some good points here. It does completely depend on the product and market. In some cases, you definitely want to release asap because that's how you validate your product. But, of course, some people take that advice too literally and release crap and then wonder what went wrong. There's a balance to be had, for sure.

100% agree with this. I actually see this problem all the time. In theory, it makes sense with some things to launch a MVP quick so you can get early feedback etc. but it has to be the right market. People need to understand it's an MVP. When you are launching to an audience/users who think it's the final product then anything less than perfect is going to turn them off. And that's a bad rep you don't want. So, yes, release late and release rarely is very good advice if you're doing B2C.

Releasing early usually doesn't mean you release junk, you just have a lean set of features. You can have all three, releasing soon, frequently and presentable. In fact you can achieve a feedback loop of where each release in in a specific space is faster and better because you can work off of previous releases and build up an internal pipeline.

In startup world there are no absolutions and exceptions everywhere, so it really depends on what product you are building, in what team, market, etc..

Thank you for the article
I own a development agency https://criov.com/ and i am planning to relaunch again after adding some services , i dont see it as a bad idea