How did you actually launch?
So, I didn't put too much thought into how to launch. I didn't build in public, and no one knew about my product until I decided I'm ready to launch. Maybe my background is a little different than most here, because I just created something that I was thinking about for a long time and eventually I just sat down and did it. I didn't really look into the entire strategy behind making your product known publicly until after I launched.
So my launch was an HN post, because that's just where I was most active and a lot of SaaS announce their service there. Now that I think about it though, most probably already have some eyes on them before launching on HN.
Result: my post didn't get a lot of traction and fizzled away. I did expect that, because on HN most posts just fizzle out, so I wasn't too bummed about it. Still, it's a bit anticlimactic.
It was still a launch to me. The product still exists, the site is indexed, there's more than 0 users, but that's about it. So how do you actually launch a product properly?
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One thing I've slowly come to believe is that most launches are overrated.
Founders imagine a launch as a single event where the world discovers the product. In reality, most products seem to grow through a long series of small discoveries.
A Hacker News post, a Reddit comment, a customer referral, a blog post, a search result, a conversation.
The reason launch day often feels anticlimactic is that we expect it to answer the question: "Does anyone want this?"
Most of the time it doesn't. It just gives you the first data point.
If I were starting over, I'd probably think less about having a perfect launch and more about creating a repeatable way for new people to discover the product every week afterward.