How to launch (again and again)

I'm Ken Meenalik. I'm a partner at Y Combinator, and one of the things I help founders do a lot is prepare to launch. That is what I'm gonna talk to you about today. So I want to change the way that you think about launching. So most people think about launching as something that you get one shot at. But I so for example, I just talked to a team that's been preparing to launch for six months.

They were lovingly trying to get every pixel perfect on their product before they shared it with everyone, And now they are stressing over every line on their landing page, and, you know, they're trying to line up everything right with timing. But if you're like most startups, you will launch something, and no one will care.

And if it took you six months to get there, you your startup is probably gonna be dead before you get another chance to launch. So in the same sort of spirit at always be shipping, I want you to think about launching as something you can continually do. I wanna destroy the idea that launching is just this one moment in time.

Because assuming you do well and assuming you ship new products and new features, you are never going to be not launching. So let's talk about all the ways that you can launch. Here are different opportunities to launch that we're going to go through today. I'll go through each of these except press launches.

We have done a previous startups lecture on press launches, and I'll share a link to that and some resources, you know, after this. But we'll go over most of these, and most of these things are things that you should be doing while you're in start up school. So let's talk about first why you want to continuously launch.

So before you even have a fully functioning product, you get a chance to practice your pitch, and you can refine it. You can AB test it and see how people actually respond to the idea. And then once you have an MVP or, you know, a very early version of your product, launching through different channels will give you an opportunity to see how people will respond to that early version of the product.

You know, and then launching to different channels will help you determine whether you're even talking to the right users because, you know, you might launch on one channel and get no response. You'll launch on another channel, and you'll get a huge response. And so that will help you identify whether, you know, you're identifying the right user for what you're building.

So let's talk about some of the types of launches that you can do while you're in start up school. And I'm excited to hear that, you know, a thousand of you have launched so far since the start up of start up start up school. That's incredible. So I clicked on 10 random start up school companies from founders who'd posted on the forum, and only about half had landing pages.

So this is what I call the silent launch, and you do not need anything fancy for this. You know, all you need is a domain name, your company name, a short description, a contact, and a call to action. So for example, this is a random start up school company that I found from a founder who'd posted on the forum. Their company is Zynq. They have, you know, a domain name. They have their company name.

They have their, you know, short one line pitch, a short description, and their call to action, which is get in touch. The call to action can be something like, you know, subscribe to our newsletter or subscribe to hear more when we launch. Product Hunt, for example, has an actual product for prelaunch companies called Ship, and it's a way to collect potential, like, interest from potential users.

So for example, this is something called designer school, and it has a quick intro from the founders, a short description of what the company does, and the call to action, which is subscribe. So, you know, you can go on Product Hunt and set up one of these pages.

But, of course, you can also build your own landing page incredibly quickly and easily, and this should be something, if you don't have one yet, that you do this weekend. So the next thing is the friends and family launch. So if you're at idea stage, you can test out your short pitch on family and friends and see how they respond.

And once you have an MVP, do a friends and family launch as quickly as possible. So in its earliest days, Reddit was shared just among the founders of their batch at YC. You know, there were only eight companies. It was a really small community. I used the way back machine to actually see what Reddit looked like in its earliest days. It hasn't changed that much.

But if you look closely, this is actually before they called upvotes upvotes. They were calling it boosts. This is, like, 02/2005, I think July. So that's how they got their very first users, just sharing it among their community of founders.

And so, you know, what I recommend you do is share the product with your friends and family, watch them use it, you know, sit down next to them, and ask for feedback.

But don't stay in this phase for too long, because your friends and family might not be the exact right, you know, ideal user for your product or what you're building, and so sometimes their feedback isn't quite as helpful, as a real user's So for example, you know, if Alexis and Steve had shared this with their parents, they their parents might have been like, what the hell is this?

So you get, you know, get out of that, you know, family and friends circuit as fast as you can. And so the next move would be to launch to strangers. So one of my favorite examples of a YC company launching launching to strangers is the company Lug. So Lug is an app that lets you call movers and delivery people on demand.

So even before Lug had built a fully functioning app or product, they would rent a truck, and they would go drive to IKEA, and they would sit outside of IKEA. So they would watch shoppers, and they'd look for people who were having a particularly difficult time tying stuff to the top of their cars. And they'd run up to those customers, and they'd say, like, hey.

Instead of trying to tie this, you know, mattress on top of your car, wouldn't it be cool if you could just push a button and someone with a truck would come and help do this for you? And, you know, the customers would be, like, sweating. And they'd be like, yes. That's that's exactly what I need at this moment.

And, you know, they'd they'd download the app, they'd click the lug button, and then the founder would run back to the parking lot, drive up in his truck, and then the the customer would be like, oh my god. It's you. And and they were like, yeah. You know? So it was a real hustle at the beginning.

Like, none of this was working on the back end, but it really confirmed for them that this was a hair on fire problem for their users and customers. And so they decided it makes sense for us to really build this out and spend time, you know, on this product. So launching to strangers will help do that for you.

It will help show you whether people are actually willing to download and pay for what it is you're building. Let's talk about online communities. This is actually one of my favorite ways to launch. I think you should plan a launch for every single community that you are part of. So when a company goes through Y Combinator, they have the option of launching on Bookface before they launch publicly.

So Bookface is our internal platform at YC. It's like Facebook meets LinkedIn meets Quora, and there are currently over 4,000, you know, other founders on Bookbase. So it's a fairly low risk way to launch because it's it's not totally public, but there are, you know, is enough of an audience there to get some feedback.

And you're launching in front of, you know, fairly friendly people who, you know, wanna see you succeed. And so they they launch there. And what I think you guys are particularly lucky because you have Startup School, and you have the Startup School forum, which about 40,000 founders are on.

So if you have an early version of your product, there is literally no reason that you shouldn't be launching to the Startup School community in the next few weeks. And so, you know, I also think that founders and other people making and building stuff, they give the best early product feedback. So you have thousands of other founders at your disposal.

So I think that, you know, that this, you know, kind of gives you a leg up here. Here's a sort of extreme example of a company that successfully launched in online communities. So Magic is an on demand personal assistant. When they started in Y Combinator in 2015, they were actually building a blood pressure monitoring app.

They were trying to get this blood pressure monitoring app to grow, and it wasn't growing as quickly as they were hoping. So they decided, you know, let's test out another idea, that we had. So they sent a link around to their friends and family, and it just looked like this. It basically said, like, text this phone number, and we'll make anything happen like magic. Like, it was very, very basic.

And their friend one of their friends thought it was so cool that they shared it on Reddit and Hacker News. And, basically, overnight, like, over the course of a weekend, 40,000 people signed up, to use Magic. And so, of course, they were like, oh my god. This is crazy. And and let's, you know, let's be honest.

This is an extreme case, and almost no one who launches on Reddit and Hacker News, is going to get 40,000 users overnight. But my point is it's definitely worth putting yourself out there because, you know, you might be one of those, like, extreme cases, but at the very least, you'll get some early users and you'll get some great feedback.

So many of the startups that go through YC launch on Hacker News and Product Hunt. And, you know, we, over time, have looked at the stats of how well these launches convert. So, you know, a TechCrunch launch versus a Product Hunt launch versus a Hacker News launch.

And in terms of converting to users, you know, they're starting to even out in terms of their impact and and conversion for, you know, whether it's, you know, your sign ups or, you know, converting to customers. So if you're launching in these communities and aren't active members of these communities yet, I my suggestion is that you spend a little bit of time looking at the communities.

You understand the rules, especially if you're if you're posting to subreddits. Right? They all sort of have their own moderators have their own rules. Understand the best way to talk to to these communities. And if it's a community that's known for being helpful, ask for advice. Ask for feedback. If you're not part of these communities, I'd reach out to someone who is and ask them for advice.

Ask them for the best way to launch because there are going to be tips for every community. And, you know, for example, one company in this batch, you know, was building something that he wanted to get more, you know, women's perspectives on, and and there are, you know, two male founders. And one of the users of Alpha, which is a community for women in tech, said, hey.

I'll post that to, you know, for to Alpha for you, and I'll I'll tell you what kind of feedback they got. So I recommend, like, connecting with someone in the community and asking them for help if you're not part of the community yourself. The biggest piece of advice I have for launching on online communities is write like you talk. Do not talk like a marketing robot. People hate that.

So don't use marketing language or deep jargon. Talk like a human when you're when you're addressing the community. So all you need in these you know, when you introduce yourself in these posts, introduce yourself, talk about what you're building, talk briefly about why you're doing it or how you came across the problem. People on Hacker News, for example, are super intellectually curious.

So are there any interesting insights that you've learned from talking to potential users or your users? Is there anything surprising or delightful that you could share with the community? Because people love that. And they also wanna ask you questions, but sometimes don't know exactly how or which questions they should ask you. So tee it up for them. Say, hey.

I'm an expert in x, y, and z, and I'm happy to answer questions on these topics. Otherwise, you risk people going down all sorts of weird rabbit holes. But so and just make sure, like, that you sort of are sharing this community, asking and asking them for advice. Try to cut down as much of the jargon and marketing as possible out of these pitches. The request for access launch.

The Magic story that that I shared with you actually reminded me of this other type of launch you can do. So when Magic launched, you know, overnight, they got 40,000 people signing up. And, of course, they couldn't serve 40,000 users immediately, so they launched a waitlist. And they also gave people ways to skip the line.

So for example, if you tweeted about Magic, you'd get, you know, to skip a few spots in line. So you can build these viral elements into your launches that will help get people to spread the word for you. One of my current favorite examples of this request for access launch is Superhuman. So Superhuman is building a better email experience. So you can go to their site here and request access.

And you can also ask a current user to refer you, and then that'll help you skip the line. So in the signature of all emails that are sent by Superhuman users is a little tag that says sent by Superhuman. And so I'm a Superhuman user, and I get a ton of emails. Like, I'll send a ton out of, you know, of my emails out to people, and I get a ton of emails asking me for referrals.

So, you know, people I email say, hey. How did you like Superhuman? Would you mind referring me to the product? So if you have a product that you can build this sort of viral element into, I I highly recommend it. So we don't have a huge amount of time because, obviously, social media and launching to bloggers is this huge and long and well covered topic.

But I I wanted to skim them briefly and give you an example of a company, that we worked with that did it very well. As most of you know, launching to popular blogs that cover your industry or trade can be incredibly powerful. So Joy is a free wedding website builder, and they were one of the fastest growing companies in their batch.

And a lot of their early growth, like, an alarming amount of their really early growth was due to being placed on a number of lists like this. They essentially googled. They looked at, you know, SEO, and they googled, you know, best wedding website builders and figured out who was coming up on, you know, the first couple pages of results on Google.

And they reached out to all those bloggers, and, you know, they said, hey. We have this new product. You know, we think your community would love it. Would you be willing to add us to this list?

And they, you know, they said that they reached out and basically did a drip campaign to over 50 of you know, 50 bloggers and only got responses from four, but those four responses made a huge impact for their early growth. So one note that I want you to keep in mind is that some blogger and influencer opportunities are pay to play.

And, Joy did not pay early on, and I do not want you paying early on either. If folks are asking you to pay, please find other or creative routes, to get around this because as startups, as early stage startups, you just don't have, you don't have the money to do it. And so I'm it is definitely possible to go this route without paying a ton of money.

So figure out, you know, wait routes around the expensive sort of sponsorship dollars. If you're a hardware or physical product, of course, you can do a preorder campaign. So, you know, at pairing for preorder launch could honestly be a whole presentation of its own. But take a look at some successful campaigns and get a sense for how they built out their launch strategy.

So for example, Sheertext was a company in YC that was making unbreakable sheer pantyhose. The founder, Catherine, made a great, really compelling video. She pitched press. She launched on Hacker News where, you know, Hacker News is probably, you know, it's a very male audience.

So we were curious how how they would respond to something like sheer, you know, unbreakable pantyhose, but they loved it. They thought it was very clever. They thought, you know, that the technical piece behind it was really interesting. And, you know, so so I would recommend, like, any company, you know, try to launch and and see how different communities respond. She launched on Product Hunt.

She asked her friends and family and batchmates to and investors to help spread the word, and she had an incredibly successful campaign. And so, of course, there's a new feature or new product line launches. So two very different companies, that do this incredibly well are Stripe and Glossier. So both companies are incredibly smart about how they launch new products.

So Stripe has always been great from the very beginning. They've been really great at engaging the community.

So every time they launch a product so for example, when they launched Stripe Atlas, they launched it on Hacker News, and the founders were in the thread talking to all, you know, potential users and and talking about the product and why they were launching it, the problems that they felt it was solving. They blogged about it. They spread the word on social media. They pitched press.

And this is something that they do over and over again. If you look at Stripe's blog, if you look at Hacker News, you can kind of see the history. Since the beginning, they've been very great at sort of activating the community. Glossier, which is a, you know, a beauty brand, is incredible at launching new product. And the way they think about it is actually very scientific.

They release products at a on a very specific cadence, at specific intervals. And for every product, they essentially hit every single launch button again and again. So community, social media, press, advertising. So each time this they you know, this new product launches, which is basically, like, every six to eight weeks, they have this cycle going.

So there's a constant drumbeat about Glossier out in, you know, out in the world. One last note before we jump into questions is while you're in start up school, you should start to build your own communities, and you this you can do this even really preproduct. So there was one YC founder, Gadi Evron, who is founder of Symmetria, and he had a really particularly successful TechCrunch launch.

A TechCrunch launch is, you know, a story about what they were doing launched in TechCrunch, and I noticed that they had a ton of shares, a ton of engagement. So I asked him to share, you know, how did, you know, how did you set this up? What did you do to share and spread the word about your launch?

And he said that over the years, you know, even before launching the product, he started to build his own email list. So every person he met that he discussed his startup with, even, you know, even very loosely, he would add them to an email list, and they would get, you know, sort of email updates about what he was working on on a semi regular, like, at semi regular intervals.

So when the TechCrunch article came out, he said he sent that email to the list full of all the people that he, you know, he'd ever talked to, other startup founders, investors, friends, family, and asked for their help in spreading the news. And he said the response was significant. And he even saw VCs who hadn't invested in them sharing the story from their own personal Twitter accounts.

And he said, you know, you would be really surprised by who comes out of the woodwork to help, when you ask for it. So I would recommend while you're in start up school, you have the opportunity to talk to so many people about what you're building and and start and ask them, hey. Can I add you to my update list?

And over time, you know, that you'll get that into the hundreds, maybe maybe even thousands. So I would definitely recommend that you start doing that now. And so to sum up, I want you to stop thinking about launching as this one moment in time.

I don't want you to spend all of start up school getting ready for this one big day, this one big launch day that you're trying to line up all these things for. This is something that is a continuous process that you can do over the course of the next couple months and and into the life cycle of your company.

If you didn't catch them the first time, these are all the opportunities that we went over. And I'm Kat. So if you ever have any questions, it's demo day is coming up, so I might be slightly slower than usual to respond, but you can always reach out to Kat at Y Combinator, and I'm also on Twitter. Okay.