The Art of a Startup: Mastering the Underwhelming Launch

Thursday 24 May 2007 - Filed under web

First, I use the word startup loosely (from Silicon Valley venture capital funded companies to unemployed geeks hacking away in a basement). So you’ve been hacking away at a project in stealth mode doing the typical “hard to get” act. Alluding to friends that “you’re working on something” while not giving away any details other than “soon”. Of course, only your hardcore geek friends give a rat’s ass about it while the others shrug it off.

You’ve been slaving away at a vision for months on end. Sleepless nights coding, thinking about the details, running into all kinds of bugs and obstacles trying to get the code to simply work. You might even have a small circle of beta testers to bounce your ideas off of, a small band of passionate users always on the lookout for something new.

After what seems like forever, the moment of truth arrives and you roll out the latest changes and send out a notice to your closest acquaintances.

The reaction? Nada, zilch, nothing, etc.

Yet by finally spitting out the application you’re finally able to see it with an outsider’s point of view. And the picture isn’t pretty. It’s full of flaws. Giving birth to a web app is probably the closest any male web developer will get to giving birth to anything and like the real thing, there is postnatal depression.

The problem? You really don’t have any time to lose. You only have two choices. Give up and write it off as a big mistake or keep trying. The fact is a lot of ideas that look good in your head end up failures in real life. However, no idea is truly a loser. You just need to find a way to revive it and make it a win.

I’ve come to terms with my own creation and I’ve got some ideas to make it better. I’ll just have to keep working on it and use it as a source of inspiration. Has the journey begun or already finished? We’ll see.

2007-05-24  »  baron