I launched, will I be embarrassed?!
I just launched the website of my new project releaserecord.com.
A million things are still left to do... and maybe even more ideas are already on the wish list... However, it was time to launch and start focusing on marketing and validation.
As the adage goes: "If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you've launched to late."
Deciding the moment to launch is a well known struggle for a developer (like me), there always seems one last necessary improvement of (bug)fix before launch, until you may end up never launching...
so, let's put it to the test quickly this time!
I have to admit, I'm not completely new to the field of hacking and entrepreneurship. Currently running a company I co-founded (AI/data-driven monitoring of civil infrastructure), however every idea needs its own tweaking and form of execution.
ReleaseRecord is something I felt was missing in the developer community. There was no central place to keep track of software versions and releases, however keeping track of them and updating regularly is vital for developers to maintain a top-notch and secure IT landscape.
As I recently joined Indie Hackers, I thought this would be a good way to start my contribution with the community.
My question to you would be:
- Have you ever been embarrassed by launching to early? what happened?
- and, of course, will I be embarrassed by launching ReleaseRecord now?
( advise and tips on improvement are welcome and greatly appreciated ;) )
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Probably but who cares?! Every time I see a project that I created a year ago I'm always embarrassed but that's the nature of the game. That means you're improving so keep building and launching!
I think Release Record is a great site! What did you use to build it?
Yes I can relate to that, looking back at old projects. I guess it means you are improving, which is a nice thing :)
Thanks! I actually built it from scratch. Back-end is mostly written in Python and serving via Flask framework. Frontend HTML, CSS and some Javascript magic.
thats awesome! I'm learning flask right now, and hope to do something similar soon. flask devs link up!
You might, but who cares? Elon Musk said he produced a truck with unbreakable windows. It broke on live stream.
Yea that is so true! There are much worse things to happen. It's funny you say that, I actually heard him explaining the probable cause of what happened on a podcast today. His remark was "at least people know our demo's are authentic haha", he laughed in hindsight, it was no big deal (I suppose)
It never is a big deal. Everything works as some form of PR. Look how we talk about Tesla's truck. Would we be even mentioning it if Elon said "let's test it for a year before saying anything to public"? We wouldn't. No one will know about you if you don't put yourself out there. Start reaching potential customers.
Rather than feeling embarrassed, I was really scared to launch my product. Things like, what if it breaks? What if there's a bug that I don't know how to solve? What if a customer raised a dispute challenge? So many what if's built up and led to anxiety and fear. But I launched anyway and thankfully got to no.1 product of the day on Product Hunt!
Lesson learned: Don't give up, have faith in what you're building, and overcome your fear.
Here's my first product, a personal page builder: https://oneprofile.info :)
Thanks for sharing your story!
Checked out your website, looks really neat.
And congrats on reaching #1 position on PH!
I may check out posting there too.
Thanks! You should absolutely give a chance to launch on Product Hunt. I got my first 40 customers from there alone.
I wrote about my experience and tips on launching on Product Hunt on Twitter here, hope it helps:
All the best, @zwambelis!
Thanks, just checked your posts. You have written a lot of valuable info there, will sure make use of that coming days/weeks!
I've planned to add a user system this week and also an automated api + email, so people can actually subscribe to anything. After that I will definitely launch on PH and all the other locations you mention. I may write a posts on the outcome here on IH as well
Sounds pretty cool! All the best and good luck with your future launch, Bram!
"If you're not embarrassed by the initial launch, you've launched too late" - Reid Hoffman
Congrats on the launch!
True story. Thanks!
I have never been embarrassed by launching too early. The reason is that I often launch an experiment version first.
For my latest project (https://toddmoses.com/rewind) I wrote a short article on Medium with the premise then posted it on my social media accounts. It did so well that I made a "real" version. Had it not been received then very little effort lost.
The key is to find out if the idea has potential by investing as little as possible.
ReleaseRecord looks good. No need to be embarrassed. The only issue I see is the need for a little more description.
Thanks for sharing and the advice.
Great tip to write something about it on Medium. I actually wrote a few articles on Medium about coding a while ago, so I have a small but existing audience there. Let's see if I can make use of it.
Will also work on the descriptions. Do you have any suggestions? What (lack of) descriptions are you referring to specifically?
When I visit the page I see squares with dev technology logos and RR on top. I have to take a moment and look at things to understand what it is. The description you have is not bad but very hard to see.
The description would be something before the listing of dev technologies. A single sentence in 24px Black Font or similar. What you want is people to see it and say, "yes this is for me." or "no, I do not belong here."
For example: "The Latest Versions Of Your Favorite Dev Tools"
Yes you are right, thanks a lot for the advice, much appreciated. It needs some improvement on the layout and the message.
Besides mentioning the goal of the site, I think (with current insights) it also makes more sense to convert it a sort of news update look, instead of a listing of all the dev tools. Probably also makes the concept more clear. I've planned to do that update this week
Your welcome. The idea is solid.
I don't know who said this, but I think it comes with negative connotations. You should refrain from a perfectionist mindset with building and releasing a project, this doesn't mean that you must be okay with mediocrity and releasing an unfinished project that you're embarrassed of.
On a side note, I don't think your project looks bad.
It is never to early to launch! Just keep improving things, you will be fine.
Thanks!
Interesting, I am currently developing a project that has a version track as a part of it's core concept, and I happened to come here in yet another crisis of motivation and opened this post just 15 seconds in.
Is it a sign I should move on and finally launch my product? So scared of failure like I have something to lose anymore lol
Yes, I think you should definitely launch something asap. My experience is that I got a lot of valuable feedback from launching. Providing me insights that I would otherwise never have known.
Glad my post gives you some motivational push. If you already feel like talking about it, what is your product about?
It is kind of built, or rather, will be built around version control for developers. There is more to it and I feel like mvp will take me another month or so to complete.
I understand the premise of launching asap, but there is a bare minimum of features that have to be implemented so that the concept makes sense to the audience
Maybe there are ways to validating your ideas without building anything at all? Usually there are. Or maybe you have already done that ofc.
I guess you are a developer yourself, if you are interested in version control and have a solution or improvement for that. Something git related maybe. I don't know you personally but I know that both me and my fellow developers usually build products that we only want or end up using ourselves. Better to know if there is an audience and their needs in advance, it may save you a lot of time in building the right thing from the start
It is my first project as a developer, and I have never built anything in full stack before. Although I am not completely new to the industry and been studying python and it's frameworks for a while having a clear reason, as I was told it is simple enough to pick up fast and productive enough to do web/data.
I did not have as good of an idea of what the project is gonna end up a month ago when I started. So, naturally, as I was experimenting with different features in more of a challenge way I realised I can build something I would like to use myself in my future projects.
All in all yes, I do hope that there is an audience for the product, but this is just a great full-time practice in my career shifting episode which is great on it's own. Success would be just a pleasant bonus.
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Haha, nice, I like your take on your past. Fail fast and learn..
Indeed it is not music related, working on getting the word out and also making that clear to the search engines ;)
Good to hear you see value in it for the dev community!
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