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independence6 unconnected
standing

contested · 6 claims against 4

applies to

b2b and consumer, no audience needed

confidence

high

evidence

10 claims · 9 articles · 4 receipts

window

2014-03-13 → 2024-05-15

6 builders who never spoke to each other · contested

Weigh one loud launch day against a quiet build

Six builders argue the single launch moment is overrated: the attention drains within days, a flat launch leaves nothing to iterate on, and seeding one small group beats announcing to everyone. Nathan Barry measured the opposite and treats the window around a launch as where a product either breaks even or makes real money. What separates them is whether there is already a list waiting for the announcement.

Where this splits

Nikita Bier, Turner Osler, Zach Swinehart, Luke Thomas and Jakob Greenfeld got traction with no launch event at all, while Nathan Barry's numbers show a quiet release leaving most of the available revenue unclaimed.

  1. side 01 · 6 claims

    Skip the launch and seed one small group

    Jakob Greenfeld · Luke Thomas · Nikita Bier · Turner Osler · Zach Swinehart

    1. 1Skip the launch entirely: plant the product in one small group, watch whether it takes hold there, and only then make the group bigger.
    2. 2A physical product does not need a launch. Give units to friends for honest assessment, sell in person at local trade shows, then put up a site.
    3. 3Launch small and let the thing grow, instead of holding back for a big coordinated launch moment.
    4. 4Assume the big bang launch will underperform, and spend the effort instead on lots of small ways to get noticed.
    5. 5Avoid staking everything on one big launch, because a launch that lands flat or brings users who leave again gives you nothing left to iterate with.

  2. side 02 · 4 claims

    Run a real launch to claim the revenue

    Nathan Barry

    1. 1Never quietly publish: soft-launching a book instead of running a real launch leaves a large share of the sales on the table
    2. 2Concentrate effort on the window just before and during launch: that is where mistakes cost the most revenue.
    3. 3Once you have a list of any real size, the quality of the launch decides whether the product breaks even or makes real money.
    4. 4People buy during launches even when the product is permanently on sale, because a launch builds anticipation, gets mentioned repeatedly, feels like an event and carries a deadline.

What it returned

  • $100K

    QOR360 never held a launch. That three step sequence is how the chairs first reached buyers, and the company went from $100K to $1M in two years.

  • $5,000

    Getting audience, excitement or urgency wrong can be the gap between a $5,000 and a $10,000 launch, or $25,000+ with a bigger audience

  • 1,000

    With over 1,000 subscribers, a good launch is the difference between breaking even and $10,000

  • Nikita Bier used this same sequence on several apps that went on to spread worldwide and were acquired for large sums.

Sources

the second source

Three plays a week, for the phase you are in

No roundup of links, no news. Three tactics more than one builder arrived at separately, with the numbers each one returned and the disagreements left in.

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More in other

all other plays

the second source

Three plays a week, for the phase you are in

No roundup of links, no news. Three tactics more than one builder arrived at separately, with the numbers each one returned and the disagreements left in.

963 corroborated plays to draw from · 3 a week

One email a week. Unsubscribe in one click, and the address is used for this and nothing else.