Questions
Launch, wait, or launch a different thing?
Launch when a small group of the buyers you designed for has already paid for the product in its current form, you can serve them at a margin, and you know how the next hundred will hear about it. If those are not yet true, the real choice lies between a narrower launch, a delay with a named test, or stopping, and each deserves the scrutiny the launch itself receives.
Three signs a product is ready
The first is payment rather than praise. Compliments, waitlist sign-ups, and survey answers show interest, while invoices that were paid show demand. The second is a margin measured at real usage, support time included, rather than at the light usage of a friendly beta.
The third is a path to the next customers with a cost you can name. A plan that relies on word of mouth remains a hope until you have watched word of mouth happen. When one of the three is missing, a public launch turns a cheap question into an expensive one.
A worked example
A software company built a reporting add-on. Thirty customers used the beta, nine said they would pay $200 a month, and four actually paid when invoiced. Serving each customer costs about $35 a month, so each paying customer contributes $165.
The launch plan spends $80,000 on marketing and expects 150 customers within six months. Ramping evenly to 150, the add-on earns about 525 customer-months of contribution in that time, which repays the campaign just inside six months. Yet the plan quietly assumes about 13 percent of more than a thousand strangers will convert, when the only observed rate came from thirty hand-picked friends.
A narrower launch offers the add-on to the existing 2,000 customers with no paid campaign, for about $10,000 of effort. If 3 percent adopt, that is 60 paying customers in a quarter and a conversion rate measured on real buyers. The full campaign can follow once conversion holds above 10 percent across 300 trials.
Reversible and irreversible launches
Some launches can be quietly undone: a release to existing customers, a waitlist, a single region. Others are permanent once made, such as a public announcement, press coverage, hardware inventory, or a promise to large customers. Treat the second kind as the more serious decision, and ask for stronger evidence before it.
Delay has costs too, including a rival's head start and a team that loses heart. Put figures on those costs where you can, so that waiting is weighed rather than feared.
How the room weighs a launch
Launching now, a narrower launch, delay, and stopping each get their own Champion, so the date on the calendar never argues alone. The Challenger presses on the forecast of customers, because the plan stands or falls on it, and Inspector marks stated intent to pay as unverified and paid invoices as supported.
Red Teamer runs the month after launch in which support requests double, and Craftsman checks whether the team can ship and support the product with the people it has. The Verdict names the path that leads and the conversion rate that would change it, and the Human Decision on the date is yours.
Questions
- Is a waitlist evidence of demand?
- A waitlist is evidence of interest. Ask a share of it for a deposit or a paid pilot, and the number who agree tells you far more than the length of the list.
- How long should we delay?
- Long enough to run the test that answers your weakest assumption, and no longer. Set the date, the test, and the result that ends the delay before you begin.
- What if a rival launches first?
- Ask what the rival's launch actually takes from you. In many markets the first product teaches customers what to want, and a clearly better second product can still win them.
Further reading
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