You get more than one launch
Launch isn’t one big day but something you keep doing, for new audiences, every time you ship.
Founders treat launch day like a wedding: months of planning, one shot, and crushing silence if nobody shows up. YC partner Kat Mañalac thinks that’s backwards. In her 2019 Startup School talk, she said she wants to “destroy the idea that launching is just one moment in time.” Her point: you never really stop launching.
She describes a ladder. A silent launch with a bare-bones page. Friends and family, which you should leave quickly. Then strangers: Lugg tested its moving service by renting a truck and approaching shoppers outside IKEA before the app was fully built. Then every online community you’re part of; Magic signed up 40,000 people over a single weekend. And every new product or feature is another launch.
So stop saving everything for one perfect day. Plan a small, tailored launch for each community you genuinely belong to, and, as she puts it, write like you talk. Then treat every meaningful feature as a fresh reason to show up again.
The example
- Instead of
- “We’re polishing everything for one big launch in Q4.”
- Try
- “Launch #4 this month: our new Zapier integration, posted in r/nocode and sent to our 600 newsletter readers.”
Before you flush
List every online community you genuinely belong to, and draft one short launch post tailored to the first one on the list.