Founders who have yet to launch, what is stopping you from launching your product(s)?

Question

Im currently in pre pre launch. Just finished designing a landing page and rebranding our app across all social media platforms. Now it is a matter of creating the UX/UI design while meeting different developers and finding an actual cofounder and not a coder. What is stopping me right now is time and being a one man shop at the moment.

Where are you currently sitting on your product launch journey?

Bill Flitter · Accepted Answer

I feel your pain! I am seeking to find a unicorn called perfection - from product creep to landing page tweeks and rewriting drip emails 3x. Decided this week enough is enough and getting to the home stretch (launch) knowing it's not done (nor perfect)! Feels good.

Christian Heine · Answer

To answer the last question first: I've recently launched on web & iOS with Android starting to go into beta soon.

Regarding the underlying question: Being torn between the various aspects of (early) startup life is hard. It does get a bit easier over time, but along with doubts about the product it remains a constant struggle to deal with.

UI/UX is extremely important (maybe more than the underlying logic at the beginning), but even more so try to be as clear as possible who you want to serve and what benefit it will bring. 
I plead guilty myself of having started without being very clear on what the product. I hoped that this would become obvious along the way. It won't. It took very deliberate effort to take a step back and work on it. But once your goals are crystal clear, other things start to fall into place. It will still be hard more often than not, but as Nietzsche famously said "He who has a why can bear almost any how".

Oh, and not striving for perfection, as @billflitter already pointed out, also helps a lot.

Good luck and stay resilient!

Sani Djaya · Answer

UX/UI design I would say is harder than designing a landing page. Start getting to work on product designs, put it in front of users, and iterate!

I would only spend 15-20% of your time looking for a co-founder. Talking to users is more important.

Yogi · Answer

Honestly, the "About Page" designing and development is blocking me from launching 🤣

Mata Mokwala · Answer

@lauren_place Thanks for that insight Lauren. Cant wait to see the finished product!

Mata Mokwala · Answer

@sreekar I would want the same thing that you have. Someone to complement your skills and bring a fresh pair of eyes that will critique decisions that I am making. Finding a cofound is really like dating lol

Andrew Goei · Answer

We see most of our clients struggling with the "fear of not being perfect." They keep wanting to perfect their product/service before they launch which is completely understandable (we've all been there), but at the same time you have to figure out what you can launch with sooner so that you can start gathering data/metrics/user behavior/feedback and understand that your product/service will always be evolving. It won't ever be perfect in your mind because you'll constantly come up with new ideas (since most entrepreneurs have ADD).

Fabien Fournier · Answer

I understand what you mean.
We just launched today, and the road to get there has not been easy.
I think the hardest part was figuring out how to talk about ourselves well. We iterate so many times on words on our landing, or on our product presentation video. That was a long and hard process.

Lauren Place · Answer

Brand Design related (making sure all our logos, buttons, etc were cohesive and beautiful)
Feature related (constantly iterating on user feedback and deciding what to build out and what to discard)

The two are interrelated— everytime there was a feature update we'd have to revisit demo videos and how we'd like the new button to look !

We're prepping to launch on PH soon!

Sreekar Channapragada · Answer

It is really challenging what you're doing. We've been working for almost a year and launching in a couple of months time. I get the role and responsibilities of the coder but what are you expecting from your co-founder?

What I get from my co-founder every single day are 2 things - co-creation and critique - on the product as well as on my personality. Apart from the fact that he is the only certainty through this uncertainty!

Sam Bauer · Answer

Late alpha to open beta. Some missing features are stopping us from launching as well as some missing preliminary definitions: the explainer movie, the tutorial movie, the payment gateway, the GPT-3 integration and of course more user feedback and confidence that we are already at the point to launch.... super exciting and exhausting all....

Bill Flitter · Answer

@makayla_a couldn't agree more. I finally showed it to a few trusted people. already had some 'why didn't I think of that' moments.

Mata Mokwala · Answer

@sani_djaya Couldnt have said any better.

Bill Flitter · Answer

@mata_mokwala sweet. good luck!

Mata Mokwala · Answer

@fabien_fournier1 First off, congrats on the launch Fabien! I cant only imagine the amount of time and effort it went into this. Im checking you guys out right now.

Founders who have yet to launch, what is stopping you from launching your product(s)?

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