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Launch means getting any customers
What big launches look like
Big companies launch with press coverage and plenty of buzz, and founders watching them assume that is what a launch is supposed to look like. Yet hardly anyone remembers the day Google launched, or Facebook, or Twitter.
Two kinds of launch
Splitting the word in two makes it easier. The press launch is when people write about a product and the excitement builds. The launch that matters is the one that gets customers, and it should come as early as possible while the press launch is pushed off.
Why customers teach more
Customers are much harder to learn from when they have nothing to play with. Conversations can go on all day without showing whether a product solves their problem, and a product put in front of them shows it right away. Time spent on a pitch deck is worth less than time spent building anything that can be handed to a customer.
Why did Facebook start at just Harvard?
Mark Zuckerberg launched thefacebook.com from his Harvard dorm room on February 4, 2004, open only to Harvard students. Within weeks it opened to Columbia, Stanford, and Yale, and it kept adding schools through the year. Rolling out one campus at a time kept the site small enough for a tiny team to run. Facebook did not open to anyone aged 13 or older until September 2006.
Why did Gmail launch by invitation only?
Google introduced Gmail on April 1, 2004, and for years new accounts needed an invitation from an existing user. Invitations limited how fast the user base grew while Google added capacity. The launch offered one gigabyte of storage, when Hotmail and Yahoo Mail gave free users a few megabytes. Invitations became so sought after that they were sold on eBay, and Gmail opened to everyone in February 2007.
How small was Twitter's first version?
Jack Dorsey sent the first message on the service on March 21, 2006, reading just setting up my twttr. It was built inside Odeo, a podcasting company, as a side project for sending short text messages to groups. Twitter opened to the public in July 2006. Messages were limited to 140 characters, a ceiling tied to the 160-character limit of SMS texts.
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