Never Launch, Just Iterate

38 Comments
by on November 17, 2009  •  Permalink
Posted in Marketing, Marketing.fm, Technology, Venture capital
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Last week I hosted a group of NYC entrepreneurs who came out to hear from Steve Blank. It was a great event and I am working on getting the video online.

During the night Steve asked the audience a great question; “when did Google launch?”

It was met with blank stares as nobody really knew the answer.

The answer is that they never officially “launched”. Sure they opened up the product to a larger sample, but from the first index of sites, to the next 100,000, to the next 1,000,000 then just kept having people use the product. They outgrew their servers and office space and continued to grow the product. They iterated along the way and used the crawling of the web as a catalyst for growth and adding new hardware.

This has resonated with me and gives an important lesson; never launch, just iterate.

By launching you are setting yourself up for the inevitable drop off in users, interest, and clicks happening at your site. Yes, you can have a press cycle and let folks know at the same time what you are up to, but I believe that having a fixed date can be a detractor from your core mission.

By putting things out there in current form, iterating on feedback, putting the next product out there, then iterating again – puts you in a unique position of always having people using your product.

Although this may not work for everything, I think web services provide the perfect playground to see this in action. I see companies that line up press, users, bloggers, and hope the stars align for their “launch day” whereas they should be concentrating on a useful user experience.

Having an alpha, beta, or early access program (as Steve likes to call it) is great – but having your product being used is the important step.

So launch today, iterate tomorrow, and never have a reason why somebody new can’t get on the system right now.

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Posted by Eric Friedman on November 17, 2009

http://www.ericgfriedman.com/2009/11/17/never-launch-just-iterate/

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  • http://disruptivethoughts.com Fraser

    I'm also a fan of the notion of decoupling the product launch from the marketing launch. Although, I guess the idea of 'never launch, just iterate' takes it one step further.

  • http://www.marketing.fm EricFriedman

    This might be 50% psychology, because you do need “ship dates”, but I still
    like it.

  • http://www.jonsteinberg.com jonsteinberg

    Or you could phrase it as “launch continually” or launch every day

  • http://www.marketing.fm EricFriedman

    Yes.

  • http://www.adstruc.com ADstruc

    Great point, Eric. We are thinking the same setup for our “launch” or “iteration” of our online marketplace for outdoor advertising.

    John
    ADstruc
    http://www.adstruc.com

  • http://www.marketing.fm EricFriedman

    I think its a good approach

  • http://www.digitalgoggles.com mcichows

    Nice post, Eric. Sounded like a great event. Wish I was able to attend.

    Agree the focus should be almost entirely on getting people to use your product and getting their feedback. Everything else is a distraction.

  • http://www.marketing.fm EricFriedman

    If you are not iterating on feedback – its feature bloat.

    The event went really well and it was great to hear from Steve in person.
    Hoping to share the video post in the next few days as it came out really
    well.

  • http://www.joesiewert.com joesiewert

    That last line about never preventing someone from getting on the system right now reminds me of Fred's post on instant gratification the other day (http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2009/11/the-power-of-in…). Definitely important to always be on and always improving.

  • http://www.marketing.fm EricFriedman

    It is definitely very important

  • http://www.spencerfry.com/ Spencer Fry

    I love the idea of never launching and just iterating. This will still leave you room to have marketing announcements, etc., as Google does and others.

  • http://www.spencerfry.com/ Spencer Fry

    Also like the idea of decoupling product and marketing launches.

  • http://blog.jwegener.com Jonathan Wegener

    I wasn't able to attend the event, but in general I don't know if I agree 100% with this.

    Arguably one of the hardest parts of product development is getting attention for your product. It's all nice and well to suggest that if you simply make a great product, it'll sell itself. But is that necessarily mutually exclusive from doing formal product launches?

    Certainly things like iPhone apps live or die by their ability to generate press and buzz. Successful product launches are key. I don't think that having a product launch excludes you from *properly developing* a product and I think Yipit is an example of that.

    I really like Vinny and Jim's strategy — a large but closed beta. They're iteratively improving the product and they'll know when it's time to launch the product when the usage and feedback levels meet their criteria. Until then, they're tinkering with it to get the formula right. Once it's right, they'll launch and hopefully get some press and WoM marketing. They'll have a heck of a better chance of capitalizing on that launch buzz because they're made sure the product is right. And similarly, they'll have a better chance of getting buzz if they do an actual product launch.

    Just my 2cents!

  • http://www.marketing.fm EricFriedman

    I actually think what they are doing is the perfect example. If they
    “launched” their product it would be totally different in 3-6 months. I
    think they have opened the doors (soft launched) and are getting
    usagefeedbackusers and then will do the press cycle later. You don't want
    to waste your big press moments with a product that will change.

    Its obviously different for every company, and the semantics can get you
    dizzy, but the overall point I think we agree on is that getting people on a
    service is always better than building it without many users for 18 months.

  • glen_NIXTY

    We at NIXTY couldn't agree with you more. The soft launch idea and ongoing iteration is much better than a Hollywood launch with steep declines in users. This is even more true if your launch doesn't go so well and you end up alienating a lot of potential users.

  • http://www.nixty.com/ Glen

    We at NIXTY couldn’t agree with you more. The soft launch idea and ongoing iteration is much better than a Hollywood launch with steep declines in users. This is even more true if your launch doesn’t go so well and you end up alienating a lot of potential users.

  • http://thefuturebuzz.com AdamSinger

    This is a great post – classic Marketing.fm stuff. Concise and impactful!

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  • http://richavipul.com vips

    It make more sense in web based product, we also adopted this strategy, it looked natural/obvious to us. I wrote a blog post after reading this
    http://weddew.com/blog/2009/11/launching-strate…

  • http://www.marketing.fm EricFriedman

    thanks I will check it out

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  • http://ubermarketing.wordpress.com Akash Sharma

    Hi Eric thanks for sharing this “never launch, just iterate.” damn good point, Startups today need to understand that they can do something different and better by not going the traditional way of doing PR and related stuff, and yes Google has to be the best example even I thought for a while when did it launch but as I read over it never really happened.

  • http://www.uncorkedventures.com wine clubs

    Good advice for my wine club. Although we'll have something of an official launch with family and friends, we've already shipped 18 bottles of wine. Google “launched” from someone's garage which is pretty crazy to think about.

  • http://www.marketing.fm EricFriedman

    Always a good idea to show small groups

  • http://www.uncorkedventures.com wine clubs

    Good advice for my wine club. Although we'll have something of an official launch with family and friends, we've already shipped 18 bottles of wine. Google “launched” from someone's garage which is pretty crazy to think about.

  • http://www.marketing.fm EricFriedman

    Always a good idea to show small groups

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    Without technology marketing is not possible, Making a good marketing strategy technology is also need.

  • http://www.advancedraidrecovery.co.uk Raid Recovery

    good story. I think these events are memorable for a technical person

  • mauijack60

    I liked the picture which has been used in this blog.

    Maui Wedding Videographer

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  • http://www.mazekni.com Musique Arabe

    Hi, this is real, iterating things maybe the best thing for a project success, launching mean expecting everything, and sometimes we may have bad surprised if things goes bad not like we planed. Big thanks for sharing this info :)

  • http://www.wheelmax.com Wheels For Sale

    The soft launch idea and ongoing iteration is much better than a Hollywood launch with steep declines in users.

  • http://security-wire.com/08/how-to-remove-my-security-shield-rogue-anti-spyware.html remove security shield virus

    I can’t agree with your points any more. Just launch!

  • http://www.dcacomputers.com.au/desktop-computers/home-and-office-pc.html Desktop computers

    launching means lots of people have lots of expectation so d product quality should good enough..

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    i agree with u.. i also like it.

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