How do you launch the same product more than once?
We ship constantly as a small team, and we've been on a roll launching to Product Hunt every week for over 2 months now for different features (see our launch history). Each time I worry it reads as "this again?"
Our current strategy: launch features like they're products. Give the feature its own name, own story, own audience, and don't lean on the company's history to sell it.
Take our last launch, Basedash Actions. It's just one feature within our larger BI platform, but we positioned it as the quintessential new way for companies to manage their data and interface to other tools.
But there's definitely a version of this that goes wrong, where every minor update gets the full launch treatment and people tune you out entirely.
Curious how others draw the line. What's your bar for something deserving a launch versus just a changelog entry?
Replies
We've taken a similar approach with Salestrics.
Our rule is simple: if the update solves a different problem for a different audience—or creates a fundamentally new workflow—it deserves its own launch. If it's just an improvement to an existing workflow, it's a changelog.
For example, we launched our CRM, then our Service Desk, then Email, and now Orbit. They're all part of the same platform, but each removes a different tool from a startup's stack and tells a different story.
I think people only get "launch fatigue" when every release is "we redesigned the settings page." If a launch answers a new "why would I use this?" rather than just "what changed?", it's worth telling.
the heuristic i'd add on top of Austin's: would this feature survive being unbundled and sold as its own standalone product. if yes, it's a launch. if the honest answer is "well kind of, if you squint," it's a changelog entry wearing a launch costume. the other thing nobody talks about is that your audience's attention is a budget, not a renewable resource - every launch that doesn't clear the bar spends down trust you'll want later for the one that actually matters