"Launch early, launch often"

At Product Hunt, we live by the motto of “launch early, launch often.”

If you wait until your product is “perfect”, you might waste time building something nobody wants. And if you only launch once, you might have built something cool, but the launch sucked so people aren’t finding out about it. That’s why you’ve gotta do both: “launch early, launch often”.

Let’s break our motto down into 2 parts:

Launch early

Launch products before you’re ready.

All you need to do is solve 1 problem better than current solutions. Whether it’s a fintech SaaS solving accounting problems or a silly book showing people how to do meme marketing, all you need to do is solve 1 major problem.

Solving 1 problem is hard enough.

Focus on solving 1 real problem (at first).

Solving 1 problem well is better than trying to solve 10 problems and solving 0. You don’t get a participation prize for trying, you get churn and a bunch of users pissed off you wasted their time. Solve 1 problem. Product leader Lenny Rachitsky talks about the idea of completing your “job to be done”. Focus on that job. 1 job. Do it well (whether it’s making memes or doing fancy finance).

The best hackers on Product Hunt follow this 1-problem pattern to a tee. They launch SaaS to solve 1 problem, grow it, then either launch new features or completely new SaaS to solve new problems.

• Pietor Levels is the all-time master. His AI interior design app InteriorAI.com makes $40k/mo. His AI photography app PhotoAI.com makes $54k/mo. These apps each started by solving 1 problem extremely well. (To launch as fast as possible, he even uses identical design for landing pages for them).

• Product Hunt’s 2023 Maker of the Year Marc Louvion runs an $80k/month business called Shipfa.st that helps people ship SaaS faster by giving them a template of tools. That’s it. He solves 1 problem and it’s in the name (people ship slow and they want to ship faster).

• I’m trying to follow this pattern too. Meme Alerts solves 1 stupid-simple problem: it’s impossible to keep up with all the newest viral memes so we alert you of them. That’s it. Keep it simple stupid. (I’ll add more features soon, but I’m still perfecting the “alerts feature”).

As my Dad always told me, if you’re the best at what you do, you can make a lot of money in any field: the best plumber at the top of his game working on gold-plated toilets for billionaires is making millions. Personally, I’d rather be the best at meme marketing than plumbing, but hey, that’s just me. If you can solve 1 problem extremely well, you can make a lot of money.

Launch early to see if your product solves 1 problem. If it doesn’t, go talk to users and get feedback. Iterate then launch again. Repeat this process for each problem. That’s why it pays to be launching often.

Launch often.

You can’t launch once and get rich.

Believe it or not, but the first launch of even some of the hottest startups and brands in Silicon Valley were complete flops.

• No-code tool Bubble raised a $100M Series A, but their first Product Hunt launch only got 148 upvotes.

• Jam.dev has 120,000 WAU now, but had 7 failed product launches. I discuss 1 of the funniest ones on a pod with the team here.

• Linear is worth $400M+ now, but their first launch only got 18 upvotes. Linear has since launched 10+ times on Product Hunt.

So don’t just launch once. Launch often. Launch every new feature on Product Hunt AND across socials. Launch your app again and again. Always be launchin. When you launch of then, this is what happens:

1. You keep getting new users. This means more of 2 things: money and feedback. Take the feedback and go make more your product better to make more money. Iterate, launch, iterate, launch, repeat until rich—and then become a VC and help others do the same.

2. You practice the skill of launching. Yes, launching itself is a skill. You’re like the mastermind behind a heist. If you’ve seen Money Heist or Ocean’s Eleven, you know you need a well-oiled plan, process, design, assets, copywriting, and team to all be perfectly aligned. You get better at the act of launching aka go-to-market strategy every time you plan a launch. With AI and no-code tools, it’s getting easier and easier to launch products—but it’s harder than ever to get attention on them. Learning how to launch gets more important everyday.

3. You build a reputation for having high product velocity. This is underrated. If the world sees you can constantly be launching and aligning your team to accomplish ambitious goals, you earn social capital valuable for everything from hiring the best team members to raising money. Beehiiv launches a new feature every week like they’re Supreme doing drops. By doing this almost every single week for 2+ years, they’ve become one of the buzziest startups in Silicon Valley.

Stop waiting, start launching.

Are you launching soon? Reply to this email and tell me what you’re launching! I’ll give you some tips!

This essay would not have been possible without everything I’ve learned working everyday with Product Hunt’s CEO Rajiv Ayyangar. Rajiv has launched 7 times, gone viral and raised millions, and lives by the “launch early, launch often” motto. Check out our interview here:

My adventures this week

I talked about stupid startup ideas with Cody Schneider

This was by far the most fun pod I’ve ever done. We each came strapped with 5-10 SAVAGE ideas (some so stupid they might be smart) 😈

I even showed Cody my nutsack!

Tech Memes of the Week

Thanks for reading nerds.

Create some cool shit this week.

Jason “The Memelord” Levin

Head of Growth @ Product Hunt, Author of Memes Make Millions