Soft launching to nobody
On shipping a product to a quiet audience first, and why the silence is the point.
Most of my product launches now begin with a link sent to four people, none of whom were waiting for it.
Why I keep doing this#
A loud launch teaches you what early adopters will say in public. A quiet one teaches you what an indifferent person does on a Tuesday afternoon. The second signal is harder to fake and much more useful.
The four-person send also forces a real conversation. People who are neither cheering nor critiquing tell you the thing that everyone else is too polite to say.
What the silence is for#
Silence is the production environment for early product work. It lets a bug live for a week before it is filed. It lets a confusing screen sit without explanation. It lets you find the thing you would have fixed two hours after launch — except now you fix it before anyone else sees it.
When to get louder#
I get louder when three things are true at once: the core loop works, the first session is good, and a stranger has come back without a reminder. The first two I can engineer. The third is the only one I have to wait for.