Scott Porad

I was inspired to write the Launching is the Only Thing That Matters post based on an experience I had with a client over the weekend.  Let me start the story by telling the ending:

In web development, a launch is not the finish line.  Launching is the starting line.  Not only is it the start of a business, it’s also the start of the next phase of development.  I think the people I advise are a lot more comfortable launching quickly when the realize launching is just the beginning.

The clients I was talking to are trying to launch a relatively straightforward online retail toy store.  The design is beautiful, the product selection exquisite.  But after a year of developing the site (read: one year equals paid lots of money to a web dev shop) the were not very close to launching.

I explained that they needed to focus on launching their site and the way to do that was “strip out everything that is not absolutely 100% essential”.  Like many people launching a web site, they had a million features and loved everyone of them like children…they could not imagine living without any of them.

One of the beautiful things about a web site is that you can regularly and incrementally add features to the site.  It’s not like building a house where it all has to be done at the same time.  For a web site, you can easily build the essentials (kitchen, bathroom, bedroom) then add on the remainder (living room, dining room playroom) later on.

Agile has an expression that I let guide me often: do the simplest thing that could possibly work.  Pause for a moment and think about that: what’s the the absolute minimum necessary?  I wrote to them:

In my opinion, it’s this: home page, product list page, product detail pages, shopping cart, contact info page.  That’s the minimum amount you need to launch an online store.  I would pare it back to that, and launch.

Will that be the most robust and amazing online toy store ever?  No.  Will it work?  Yes.  Does it allow you to start creating value?  Yes.  Does it put you in a position to start learning about your customers?  Yes.  As soon as you launch, can you begin work on some of those amazing toy store features?  Absolutely!

In my view, when you see launching as the beginning, it becomes clear that launching as quickly–even before your product is fully complete or finely polished–is the most logical path to success.