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.

The most dangerous pitfall for a startup is to waste resources–time, energy, and money–on things that don’t matter.  I mean “don’t matter” in a relative, not absolute sense.  In other words, spending resources on things that “don’t matter now“.

When I advise startups I return to this theme a lot.  And, there is one piece of advice that I find myself repeating over and over again: the absolute, number one most important thing is to launch.

Let me repeat that because I can’t emphasize it enough: strip out everything that is not absolutely 100% essential and get your product, feature or site in front of real users or customers.

Why?

In most cases, you are trying to create value with whatever you are launching.  It is impossible for that to occur if you haven’t launched.  Simply put, whatever you are trying to achieve cannot happen until you launch.  Period.  To share the wisdom of a former co-worker, “you gotta be in it to win it”.

Equally as important is that the only way can start learning about what works and what doesn’t is by having real customers use it.  You may think your users or customers want a widget or gidget or flex capacitor, but you just don’t know for certain.  Until you know for certain you’re putting your resources at risk.  The surest way to find out is to get your product in front of the users and learn.

At the end of the day, launching is the name of the game…focus on it like a laser beam and you will succeed.