11–20 of 22 posts
I think in general the "you never get a second chance to make a first impression" attitude by startups is overblown. It's a big world out there. That's not to say you should launch something that sucks, but get it out there if it's interesting.
Or it could have been the Sprinkles cupcakes we handed out.
This is all excellent advice but a huge chunk of the attention Trello received is a reult of the name "Spolsky" being attached to it. He has a strong personal brand that has been cultivated for a decade.
Joel completely nailed it - if you can get on stage at a big conference, do it. Another question is: Should you go to a conference like TCDisrupt but present at Startup alley? We (FeeFighters) did that. We aren't launching anything sexy that TC would like (We are in payments and even if you are making money and have saved businesses (including Fog Creek) $75million it isn't sexy unless Jack Dorsey is running the show…
I think in general the "you never get a second chance to make a first impression" attitude by startups is overblown. It's a big world out there. That's not to say you should launch something that sucks, but get it out there if it's interesting.
This depends. For most startups what you say is true. You can launch 5 times and most wouldn't notice. But for a startup with a lot of press, a bad launch can hurt momentum (I'd think). Look at Color.
This is all excellent advice but a huge chunk of the attention Trello received is a reult of the name "Spolsky" being attached to it. He has a strong personal brand that has been cultivated for a decade.
That’s it. Those are your chances to get news. Under no circumstances can you expect to be covered because you take a walk in the woods with potential employees... you’re not Mark Zuckerberg. (Unless you are, in which case, Hi Mark!) You’re not getting font changes on the home page covered, unless you used to work for Mark Zuckerberg.
In short, you only have two or at most three chances to got coverage unless there’s Mark Zuckerberg involvement.
If you launch something and have a large following like Joel, lots of people will see it. For me, the "one chance of making a first impression" isn't that important because very few people are going to get that first (and bad) impression. For me, the feedback is of higher value and losing maybe a few hundred potential customers is not a serious threat. But what would happen if, say, Steve Jobs announced a poorly iterated new product? Millions would try it out and two things would happen: 1) they would hate it and never try it again -- the first-impression thing. But more importantly, 2) Steves reality distortion field would lose many energy-points (or whatever those run on).
If Joel "officially" launches a three weeks old web page with an input element and a submit button, it could damage the personal brand he has worked hard to establish. But if you are not a celebrity, and your ego can handle it, it's possible that you are better off with the launch early strategy..
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This depends. For most startups what you say is true. You can launch 5 times and most wouldn't notice. But for a startup with a lot of press, a bad launch can hurt momentum (I'd think). Look at Color.
or Cuil. Or Apple Ping, or Google Wave, or Google Buzz.
But, for the rest of us nobodies, there will be other opportunities for news and first impressions as we trudge along. I launched my first app in 2005 to no press, just a couple of blog posts. It was almost dead, then NY Times writes about it 3 months later while covering the topic (Personal Finance). Every few months a another press mention would popup out of the blue and 5 years later when it got its second NY Times coverage a whole new batch of people discovered it. Of course, I no longer own or work on it, and I'm still "working for the man" so what do I know?
Ain't that the truth. I shipped some code last week, and then spent some time at a customer's site demoing the new features and doing one-on-one training. It's a real buzz to see people use the stuff you made. It's easy to lose sight of that feeling when sitting in your air-conditioned beige office, divorced and detached from the realities that your users face, but when someone hugs you because of all the time and energy the code you just wrote will save them, it really validates what we do.