First-time maker (Solo Dev). Launching Sunday and terrified!

Focus on talking to real l users before launch. Even a few early conversations can save a lot of guesswork and stress on Day 1.

Honestly? I’d tell my past self not to obsess over perfection. Most first-time makers waste so much energy stressing about tiny details that barely matter on launch day. Your product sounds thoughtful and useful, and the fact you built it for yourself is already a good sign. Show up, be present in the comments, and enjoy the ride. The chaos is part of the fun

Hey Kiya, I'm a first-time founder too. Wishing you a blast of a launch! Btw, how did you choose the day of the week? Is there any rationale behind it? Thanks for asking your question here, I'll defo follow the thread to hear what the veterans say.

Congrats on taking the leap! Launching solo is always nerve-wracking, but the fact that you built something for yourself first is huge that authenticity always shows. If I could go back to the my first launch, the one thing I’d do differently: talk to real users before launch. Even a handful of early chats can surface issues or opportunities you’d never notice alone, and it makes launch day way less scary. You’ve got this!

I used to build products at Facebook, including extremely core privacy and chat features. Launching is honestly a massive coordination act over anything else -- having a timeline of what's going to happen on the day, what needs to happen before (anything you need to build, fix, but even more importantly your comms plan, where you'll be sharing news, who you'll reach out to for support).

On the day, a fixed schedule and an hour-by-hour play of what needs to happen, where you need to post, and what feature flags you need to flip really helps.

I was on engineer side of things so launches were always managed by PMs. But being a founder now, I completely understand how nerve-wracking it can feel and even I feel similarly with our upcoming launch. Everything -- marketing, content, product, tone -- we're trying to sprint and get right.

Your app seems cool and polished :). If there's one thing I'd say the copy should probably say something like "Hi, Movie Buff" instead of welcome back, and if you plan to show ratings for key movies, having a few friends having already posted some reviews could make the content a bit more interesting for new users.

If you're curious about what we're building or have feedback, check it out here https://lightfern.com/ and sign up with code sparkle2026 ^^

Hi Kiya, congrats on being a maker :) We've done a few PH launches over the years. If there's one thing I'd do differently from our first launch it would be to not get caught up in the upvotes hype.

You're going to get contacted by a bunch of people offering upvotes, a bunch of people offering lead gen services, and a bunch of people trying to sell you something.

The other thing is to manage expectations on what you'll get from the launch. PH is a great community of makers and curious people. They're likely not your target audience. You will get a bunch of signups, and potentially even a couple of paid signups if you're lucky.

In the end, don't judge the success of the launch on how many upvotes you got, where your product ranked for the day, or how many signups you got.

Judge your success on launching your product and going public with it for the first time. That's a bigger achievement than anything else.

Good luck :)