Launch Daze

🚀 Ahh yes launch day, the most important day for a startup. 🚀

The World Awakens at Your Feet

This is the day when you throw the windows open and shout out to the town square what great news you have.

The entire collected town turns to listen. Shoppers drop their packages in astonishment. Old ladies faint. Men throw their hats in the air. Children laugh and dance with dogs.

“He’s done it,” the murmur runs through the crowd. “By God he’s really done it!”

Everyone begins clapping, shouting, a stampede to your doorstep. They drag you out, throw a cloak about your shoulders, force a crown of flowers on your head, and host an impromptu parade in your honor!

Except life isn’t a Disney movie. Or if it is, it’s more like Belle’s awkward, everyone’s-polite-but-nobody-really-cares town scene at the start of Beauty and the Beast.

The reality of launch day for most startups is that nobody really notices.

You make your grand proclamation to an empty room. A janitor in the back glances up then continues sweeping. Someone turns off the lights while you’re still talking.

No matter how good or how terrible something is for you, most of the world just keeps on doing whatever the hell it is people do every day.

That’s just life. There’s no single defining moment where everything clicks, the page turns, the door opens, angels sing down at you, and it’s done.

Success is a product of sustained long-term effort. A continuous building of momentum. The concretion of a well-targeted, interested audience that falls in love with what you’re doing.

Building a product is actually building a relationship with an audience that can both appreciate and benefit from the work you’re doing. If you’re talking to the wrong group, it doesn’t mean you have a bad product or that it’s unwanted, it just means you aren’t dealing with the right people. You aren’t dealing with people who care.

For example, a business-to-business product that requires a technical person to implement and other pre-existing dependencies and needs isn’t going to become a smash hit from a few posts on social media. The average person just doesn’t care and can’t do anything about it.

You need the right audience.

Who Cares?

What you should be asking as you plan to launch your new app is, “Who cares?”

Not in the dismissive sense. In the honest, self-reflective way.

Who cares about this? Who is my audience?

Nobody throws an impromptu concert that fills an arena. They identify an audience, market the event in channels that speak to that audience, and build a cohort of motivated attendees. This work starts months ahead of the actual show. For most artists, if we’re being honest, it starts years ahead.

You didn’t build the app the day you launched it, so why did you wait until launch day to build an audience?

Like most mistakes, this is most apparent only afterwards. Hindsight is 20/20, and in life, the lesson usually comes after the test.

Failing is a part of life. Everyone starts out terrible at things and slowly becomes good at them. Everyone is a failure until the moment they succeed.

The Only Thing That Really Matters

How did you learn to talk? By trying, doing a poor job of it, and getting better over time. Walking? Reading? Writing? Math? Ok… maybe you never quite cracked math.

Everything you’re good at, you got good at slowly, by trying.

The only thing that matters is that you keep going, keep learning, keep working, keep trying. Every single day, try again.

Commit to the sustained application of effort over time.

Here’s a chart that shows what happens if you work, or don’t work, on something, for a year.

If you get 1% better every day, you’re 37x better in a year.

If you get 3% better every day, you’re almost 50,000 times better after a year.

And if you don’t work on it, and get 1% worse every day, at the end of the year you’re only 0.03% as capable as before.

“How did you go bankrupt?” “Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”

How did you get better at something? Gradually, then suddenly. You get up one day and realize damn, I’m way better at this than all those dumb jerks.

Nobody Cares and That’s Fine

I farted at a bar recently. Standing there waiting, leaned in to talk to the bartender, ripped one right there in the crowd. I started to be embarrassed.

Then I remembered: nobody cares. Hell, I don’t think they even noticed.

And “nobody cares, nobody even noticed” is the expected outcome of nearly every “launch day” for any startup.

It’s the outcome of nearly everything anyone does.

Most startups fail because nobody notices and nobody cares.

Why is an overnight success notable? Because it almost never happens. Infrequency is why something is notable. Nobody gets excited about normal things, they only notice the extremes.

“Nobody cares” is often taken as a depressing statement, but it’s one of the most freeing realizations you’ll ever have.

You want to sing karaoke but you’re terrible? Do it anyway, nobody cares.

You want to write a blog but don’t think you’re a good writer? Nobody cares.

You want to hit on that cute person but don’t want to get embarrassed if they say no? Nobody cares.

You want to do something you’re uncomfortable with doing, because you’re worried you might not be good at it, or it might not turn out the way you want?

Nobody cares. So just do it, man!

Accepting that most people will not care or notice is the realization of absolute freedom to self-actualize.

Except for the most overwhelmingly outrageous outcome, you can rest assured that nobody really cares and probably won’t notice.

For almost anything you do, nobody will ever think about it again after the very moment it happens.

Your cringiest moment? Nobody else remembers. Ok, that’s not true. The secret is that everyone remembers, and they talk about it constantly when you’re not around.

Just kidding. Nobody cares. So why should you?

Here’s freedom: Do whatever you want, because nobody really cares what you do.

Work on it, and keep working on it. Get better slowly. After a while you’ll be really damned good.

Then You’re Good At It, and Someone Does Care

1. Do what you want to do, because you want to do it.
2. Nobody cares if you aren’t great, so do it anyway.
3. Work on it and get better. Pretty soon you’ll be good at it.
4. Find people who appreciate what you’re good at.
5. Congratulations, now people care — and it’s the right people.

That’s how you find success. Not some sudden magic moment where you say or do the exact right thing, but the continued application of sustained effort over time at something that you think matters, put in front of people who know how important what you’re doing is.

Congrats blowing your launch. Everyone’s a loser until the moment they win. Welcome to the club.

Git gud, scrub.

Have fun with it! If you aren’t enjoying yourself, you’re doing it wrong.