When is the right time to promote your product when you are a first-time founder?
Yesterday, you contributed a lot to my discussion about not sounding too salesy.
But that's not the only problem the early founders have.
They usually do not know when to start promoting, or simply do not have the courage to start.
↩️ In the past:
I used to struggle with sharing something before it was finished.
I waited until everything was done before announcing that I had built something.
Because I kept the problem to myself instead of talking about it, I couldn't validate whether it was worth building or improving the idea through feedback.
I spent a lot of time on it, and it failed.
⏺️ Now:
I have built a personal brand on 3+ platforms (Product Hunt, LinkedIn, X, Substack, YT).
Community is more likely to answer my curious questions when I am building my own tool – early feedback.
I am in the process of building and already talking about it (gathering email addresses for waitlist, #buildinpublic on X, newsletter edition, mentioned it on LinkedIn, PH discussions, changing links on socials).
I am planning to interview selected LinkedIn users who will test my product and give me suggestions.
Basically, I started with the promotion before the product was built, because I needed to have the idea validated and keep momentum while building it.
I do not know whether this way is good, because the product can flop too, or be copied.
When is the right time to promote a product when you are a beginner in launching something?
Replies
Ctruh Studio
I'm living this question this week, we launch in a few days, and I've been promoting for weeks before going public.
What's helped me: reframe "promotion" by stage. Before the product exists, you're not selling, you're validating, "is this problem real to you too?" That can start immediately and it's the exact antidote to the silent-build failure you mentioned. Selling ("go use it") comes later, once enough people already feel part of the story.
And on the copy fear: sharing early builds relationships and momentum that are far harder to copy than any feature. That's turned out to be the real moat.
@sharun_kanan Exactly:) I really like the idea of reframing promotion by stage.
And I totally agree about the copy fear. If someone copies what you are doing, it probably means you are moving in a meaningful direction.
But they can only copy what they can see now. They do not know what you learned, why you made those choices, or what you will do next. That part is much harder to copy.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@sharun_kanan How do you "collect" the possible users who have the problem? Do you know of any space where someone quoted their problem? For now, I can see it as @ProblemHunt ... but is there any other?
Ctruh Studio
@busmark_w_nika Honestly, the best "collection" spots are where people complain without expecting a solution. Reddit threads and niche communities are great, but my favourite is 1-star reviews of competing or adjacent products - people literally describe the exact problem in their own words. I keep a simple doc of those quotes, and when it's time to launch, those reviewers/commenters become the first people I reach out to. No fancy tool needed, just a habit of saving the complaint the moment you see it.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@sharun_kanan you gave me an idea to read the comment sections on socials, gonna do that rn! :D TY!
Ctruh Studio
@busmark_w_nika Ha ha, love that! Comment sections are the most under-read research goldmine on the internet, people say things there they'd never put in a survey. Would genuinely be curious what you find.
Also, since we're here :P : we launch on Product Hunt on the 14th. No pressure at all, but would love your eyes on it if you're around. Either way, glad the idea was useful :D
Scarlett.
I think the right time is before the product is fully ready. Especially when you are a first-time founder.
Because at that stage, you are not only promoting the product. You are validating the idea, finding the right people, collecting feedback, and making the community part of the journey.
And being a first-time founder can make this easier. You are not promoting only to professional makers, builders, or founders, but you are also speaking to non-technical people who are watching your journey and thinking:
“Wait... maybe I can build something too if Nika (a marketer) can do it.”
Nobody expects you to have everything figured out from day one. But that is exactly why the story is relatable.
You are showing that:
Anyone can start building a product.
You do not need to be a technical founder to create something useful.
If it works, people will say: “If Nika can do it, maybe I can too.”
So I would not treat early promotion as selling.
I would treat it as bringing people into the journey early.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@byalexai I see the value in starting early (validation, inspiration for others, spreading the word). The thing is that I am more of a doer than a yapper, and I would rather show things when they are done rather than only talk about them.
Because I have seen many promises before, expectations grew, and in the end, it was a faux pas for the founder. It is like playing with the trust of people.
Scarlett.
@busmark_w_nika just post them. No need to write 100000 words. :)
I’m living this from the other side right now.
I recently launched my first app, and my biggest lesson is that “promotion” is the wrong word early on. It makes it sound like you’re selling something before it deserves to be sold.
Early on, I think it’s better to promote the problem, not the product.
My app came from a very real personal pain point: I was missing meetings because normal calendar reminders were too easy to ignore. So I built something simple for myself first. That part felt safe. The harder part was talking about it before it felt “ready.”
But here’s the catch: if you wait until everything is finished, you may have a product… but no conversation around it. And launch day is a terrible time to discover that nobody knows why your thing matters.
What I’d do differently now:
Talk about the problem earlier.
Share what I’m learning while building.
Be clear about what the product will not do.
Avoid giant promises.
Ask for feedback without acting like every request needs to become a feature.
That last one matters. Feedback is valuable, but founders also need taste and restraint. Sometimes the best feature is the one you don’t add.
So my answer would be: Start before the product is done, but don’t hype the product before it has earned trust.
Share the itch. Share the decisions. Share the constraints. Share the tiny wins. Let people see the thinking.
That way you’re not “selling too early.” You’re building trust early.
And NOTE: I am certainly not very good at this. I launched yesterday and got like 6 upvotes total. So I need to practice what I preach, I guess, and see if it works next time.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@billspaced Love the summary and those 5 or 6 points what to do better. I should definitely talk more about the problem :)
@billspaced "promote the problem not the product" matches how healthos got early signal too - talked about voice changing before someone admits something's wrong way before there was a working demo, that's what got people asking to test it. the restraint line hit hardest though, what's a feature request you turned down that you're glad you did?
Great question, and honestly this is one where "start earlier than feels comfortable" tends to be the right answer. First-time founders (myself included at the time) often wait for the product to be polished before they talk about it. That's usually too late.
What worked for me: I started talking about the problem and my thinking way before the product was ready. It gave me early feedback, built quiet trust with people who'd later care about the launch, and helped me avoid building things nobody asked for. Promotion isn't just launch day, it's the runway leading up to it.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@nolan_vu Thank you, I need to prepare very carefully for that ocassion :D
@busmark_w_nika you're welcome, hope that you can manage to do it then
im the counter-example to your list, and today is literally the day im paying for it :)
i built first, promoted never. launched on PH today as a solo founder with no audience — and the honest experience is: PH gives you the venue, but the traffic has to come from somewhere, and "somewhere" is the audience you built (or didnt) in the months before.
that said, i dont think "before the product" vs "after" is the real question. the failure mode isnt timing, its silence. i validated the idea privately (i was my own first user, scratching my own itch), which answered "is this worth building" — but it answered nothing about "will strangers care", and thats the question only public talking answers.
so my take for other first-timers: promote when you have something concrete to be curious about in public. could be a prototype, could be a problem statement. the waitlist + curious questions approach youre describing basically converts building time into audience time, and having watched my own launch today with 0 audience.. yeah, i wouldnt skip that part again.
re: fear of being copied — nobody copies an idea, they copy traction. by the time youre worth copying, the audience you built while talking is exactly the moat the copier doesnt have.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@mesut_tas well, but being your own user is enough when you do not have selling ambitions. E.g. I am building the tool primarily for myself, it is working, and it is functioning. But I also need to think about the things that maybe other people would require.
@busmark_w_nika thats a healthy way to hold it, build for yourself first, let real usage tell you whats missing. the waitlist + interviews combo sounds like exactly the right next step for that. good luck with the build, curious to see it when its out 🙌
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@mesut_tas Thank you so much! :)
one thing neither "too early" nor "too late" fully captures: promoting early also locks you in socially before you're locked in technically. we pivoted our whole company earlier this year, and the hardest part wasn't the code, it was that people who'd been following the old story for months had to be walked through why it changed. if you build an audience around v1, a real pivot later costs you some of that trust even when it's the right call. doesn't mean don't do it early, just budget for that cost going in
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@galdayan This is the thing. I do not want to make my promises too big and then let people down.
oqoqo
@galdayan @busmark_w_nika I have the same worry but I have settled on the fact that most people around me are engaging in conversations with me or my team, not necessarily with the product, esp in the early days. For eg one user who was doing an early pilot with me was more than willing to give the new product a shot (it was meant for the same ICP) because they had a relationship with me. Yet to see if this is the right approach but I'm leaning more towards building a community no matter what.
@busmark_w_nika that instinct is probably healthier than it feels in the moment. the founders who get burned aren't usually the cautious ones, it's the ones who promise the moon on day one because it gets more attention short term. underpromising and consistently delivering is slower to build an audience but it's the only version that compounds instead of eventually collapsing on itself
Great question. It made me look back on how we approached this too, and honestly, I am still thinking about it.
I think the right time is before the product is fully ready, especially when you are a first-time founder.
But early promotion does not have to mean selling too early. It can start by sharing the problem you are building around.
For Arch Calendar, we first talked about the feeling that even when AI helps us get more work done, the day still does not always feel finished. Seeing people resonate with that problem gave us more confidence, and now we are putting more effort into marketing.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@hun_kim For how long have you been building Arch Calendar? :) At least I can compare the time you dedicated to promotion :)
@busmark_w_nika About 1.5 years in closed beta :)
We wanted to make sure Arch Calendar was good enough to be a paid calendar, not just another free productivity tool. So we spent a lot of time improving the quality and learning who would actually pay for it.
Looking back, I still think we should have started sharing the problem earlier. Building the product and building the story probably need to happen together.
Nika "promotion before the product" is the part most first-timers get backwards. waiting until its done means waiting until its too late to learn anything.
the reframe that unlocked it for me: early promotion isnt selling, its validation with an audience attached. youre finding out if the problem is real before you burn months on it. and the copy fear is mostly anxiety, execution and public trust are the moat, not the idea.
start the day you can describe the problem clearly, not the day it works. what held you back more, sharing early or not knowing what to say yet?
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@artem_fedorovich When I was younger, I kept it private because of "what other people might think about me". :D Now, I am trying to share everything, and many people said that my Chrome extension is a good idea, but I am afraid that they are only saying that, but nobody will be using it :D
@busmark_w_nika Nika the fear makes sense because youve spotted a real gap: "good idea" costs nothing to say. the only honest signal is behavior. installs, second opens, someone asking when they can use it. each of those beats fifty compliments.
so flip it into a filter, stop collecting opinions and start collecting tiny actions. if they come, youve got your answer. if they dont, thats the cheapest lesson you could buy. whats the earliest action you could ask people for right now?
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@artem_fedorovich I would ask them to sign up for the waitlist. Currently 18 people are waiting :D
As a first-time founder who recently launched a product, I'd say the biggest mistake is waiting until launch day to start talking about it.
I spent far more time building than sharing, and once I launched, I realized distribution is a completely different challenge. Building the product is only half the journey—finding the people who actually need it is the other half.
Looking back, I would have started conversations around the problem much earlier instead of waiting until I had something polished to show. Even if the product changes, the problem you're solving usually stays the same, and those early conversations are invaluable.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@kartikbatchu2003 Let's say we had it similar. Did you try it with another product the other way around? I mean, building the 2nd product and talking about it directly since/before building?
@busmark_w_nika Not before ChatHop. ChatHop is actually my first attempt at doing it differently.
With my previous projects, I focused almost entirely on building. With ChatHop, I started talking to people much earlier, sharing the problem, collecting feedback, and learning from conversations like this one. It's still a work in progress, but I've already found it much easier to validate ideas and understand what users actually care about before building everything.
As a new founder, I’m finding that sharing the journey early feels less scary than waiting for a perfect launch. Even small feedback can help shape the product before too much time is invested.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@visvanathan_d How did you create for yourself a secure space to talk about your launch?
@busmark_w_nika I'm still figuring it out myself. 😄 Since Branzia is still pre-launch, I decided to share the journey instead of waiting for the "perfect" moment. Even if it doesn't immediately bring users, it helps me become more comfortable talking about what I'm building.