6 Reasons to Launch Slowly

Big companies are slow.

They have approvals processes, teams that compete for pixel space, and are filled with employees consumed by hitting OKRs to advance their own careers first and foremost.

And if startups need to be fast, it follows that you should launch fast.

But there’s a common mistake here.

It doesn’t actually matter how fast you ship. It matters how fast you learn.

In most cases these are the same, and shipping fast and often can stand in as a proxy for learning fast. After all, you learn from your users.

But there are cases when it’s better to launch slowly and with intention.

This week’s issue is about those cases.

6 Reasons to Launch Slowly

Your Product has Network Effects

Unlike single-player products, multi-sided networks can only launch once (unless you reboot the whole thing).

Especially in social product, in order to achieve a high k-factor and true virality you need to nail the UX from the moment a user is introduced to the product and onboarded.

Additionally, downtime and other performance disruptions can dilute user trust in the network which can force them to look for alternatives. It’s hard to win that back.

I’m currently working on a new part of Megaphone that has network effects and I pushed our launch back by a month to ensure we had time to perfect the experience. This is despite our initial product being launched in a super scrappy fashion.

The way to still learn quickly ahead of launch is to spend a lot of time with your users to learn their expected behaviors and, perhaps more importantly, motivations for using your product.

You’re Targeting Enterprise Customers

Selling into the enterprise from day 1 is a risky bet.

The sales cycles are long and take up considerable time with many meetings, all while the deals can fall apart for internal strategy shifts or politics that are completely outside of your control.

But if you are targeting enterprise customers early on, or if you’re a bit further along and looking to expand upmarket into enterprise deals, you’re better off taking the time to polish your product before committing to sign deals and accept revenue.

Enterprise deals have strict expectations for the quality of the product you’re delivering and what that product will enable for your customers to accomplish with it. They’ve built roadmaps and oriented teams around using your tool or service.

The stakes are high, if you fail to deliver, the deal will terminate and all the time you put in will be for nothing.

To still learn quickly, you’re better off being customer-led so that your product roadmap can be directly informed by the prospective enterprise clients.

You’re in a Highly Regulated Industry

Risk mitigation, compliance checks, and extra rigorous testing is par for the course.

The particularly frustrating part about building in these industries is that you may need to move slow even if you’re sure customers will like your product, but also if you have no idea if they will or not.

There’s not much to do here other than play the game as try to move to consumer launches as quickly as you, legally, can.

You’re Helping Creators Reach Their Audience

The term “creator economy” has fallen a bit out of vogue, but brands are still partnering with creators with increasing shares of their marketing budgets.

But creators are highly brand conscious.

You realize the extent of this especially once you get connected to large creators who’ve spent years crafting their brands and relationship with their audience.

They expect the products they interact with their audience through to have a similar level of craftsmanship.

Ironically, I’ve been able to grow Megaphone to $40k MRR despite a very basic UI and slow load times on our initial database. The reason this worked is because the creators don’t interact with audiences on Megaphone. We send them off-platform to interact on X and LinkedIn.

But this isn’t normal.

A friend who raised from top investors built a platform that allows creators to build deeper relationships with their audiences and held off launching for over a year in order to get their app performant enough for big creators to sign on as launch partners.

The good news, in this case, is that since creators know their audiences so well and are actively looking for new ways to connect with them, they’ll help inform your roadmap just like enterprise customers can.

You’re Building Physical Products

Last summer I visited my friend Brett Adcock in the Bay Area to check out his new startup, Figure’s, factory a few months after investing in the company.

(PS, here’s my interview with Brett from last year, a few months before he announced their unicorn valuation.)

The factory was incredible. His team was building motors for their AI-powered humanoid robots, and the robots were walking around and undergoing extensive testing.

You can see where this is headed.

Not everyone’s building AI-powered humanoids, but any product that requires real-world manufacturing should take the time to ensure their supply chains and processes are set up perfectly.

With the amount of capital you need to put on the line for IRL production, small errors can sink your company if they’re not caught quickly.

Ways to still learn quickly:

• Multiple, small test batches each step of the way

• Extensive research on the market, competitors, and your ICP

Brand Reputation and Trust is Essential

Building a brand takes years and destroying it takes seconds.

That’s a scary position to be in if you’re in an industry where trust in your brand is everything.

Security products are a good example of this.

Rolling out a scrappy MVP of a security product is a bad idea. Your brand will never get off the ground and angry customers will tell anyone who will listen online not to trust you.

Instead, do the same things as other cases above, focus on talking to your ICP early and often. Let them help inform your roadmap.