Launch and launch again — how to launch your products

A launch is a high-leverage moment to tell the world about your new product or feature.

When done correctly, launches are ridiculously powerful. They drive new users, deepen existing user activation and increase revenue. And they act as a crucial collaboration point aligning engineering and marketing on what matters for your customers — the audience, the value propositions and the messaging.

If you aren't launching multiple times a month, you're either shipping too slowly or not marketing effectively.

In this blog post, I'll share a framework for how to run effective launches. It can be simplified to:

Launch Impact = (Product ^ (Messaging × Launch assets)) × Distribution

The launch checklist

By creating a checklist for how you run launches, you turn launches into a repeatable system that you can optimize. The checklist should be the foundation for your launch — but don't let it limit your creativity.

I recommend creating a Google sheet that defines each of your launch tiers, the main actions needed, and who is responsible. Then, for each new launch you create a new tab in the Google sheet, only keep the rows needed for that launch and then you use it as your source of truth.

The size and effort of the launch should correspond to the different levels of impact:

• Tier 1 — for major new products
• Tier 2 — for major new features
• Tier 3 — for smaller improvements to existing products

Most early-stage startups only do tier 1 launches. By also incorporating tier 2 and tier 3 launches you can consistently drive awareness, acquisition and activation benefits.

Here's an example of what you might want to include in your checklist.

Download this example launch checklist here

Defining the messaging of your launch

Everything starts with the core messaging. You should decide the name of the product/feature, the audience you are wanting to reach, and the core value props to get across (phrases as you are going to use them in the messaging). These value propositions will be repeated across every asset you then create. Confirm with the engineering lead that it's correct and which aspects are subject to change. Then store this in your checklist.

Here's an example:

• Name:
  • Scribe v1 — the model name. A Speech to Text API
• Audiences:
  • Software engineers at high-growth startups and enterprises
• Value propositions:
  • Primary:
    • The highest-quality Speech to Text model
  • Secondary:
    • Outperforms Gemini 2.0 and Whisper large in English, Spanish, French
    • Supports 99 languages
  • Bonus:
    • Unlocks accurate transcription in underserved languages such as Serbian and Gujarati
• Goal:
  • Reach over 500 weekly active users (WAU) using Scribe in production within the first week of launch

Tip 1: The value proposition you focus on and the phrasing of them are the highest leverage decisions for your launch. You will be more likely to nail the value proposition if you deeply understand your customer and the competitive landscape. And if you become great at copywriting such that it's phrased in a crisp and memorable way.

Tip 2: Leverage SEO to choose the name. If you're launching a product or feature that already exists in the market, you can help your future self by choosing a name which optimizes for what people are already searching for — also known as SEO. For example, in the previous example of Scribe we could have called it a transcription API, however, by leveraging Google Trends and SEMRush we can see that Speech to Text is the more common term that we want to rank for in the long-term.

Creating the launch assets

Your launch assets are made from the core messaging you defined previously. They include:

• The tweet
• The launch video or image
• The landing page / blog posts

X/Twitter post

Here are some best practices for X/Twitter posts:

• Start with a strong first line. And make it clear you're launching a new product/feature
• Include the media asset (video or image) in the first tweet
• Do not include a link in the first post, instead either in the second tweet or the final tweet in the thread
• If you do a thread, include additional images or videos as appropriate
• Follow the aesthetics of a good tweet — normally use a single sentence first line, then a short paragraph or a list of bullet points
• To show a link's preview image, the tweet needs to be under 280 characters (including the link)

Making a launch video

There are several types of launch videos which can each be effective in different circumstances.

Motion design videos involve animated graphic design. They are higher cost at $2,000-$10,000 per video when outsourcing to a skilled motion designer. However, they are largely unparalleled for launch videos given the ability to highlight key value props either concretely by showing the product or more abstractly through diagrams and text. An example is the ElevenLabs Conversational AI launch video.

Walkthrough videos are great for tier 2 or tier 3 launches particularly for more b2b/developer audiences or when sharing with your community. Screen Studio is an excellent way to build in engaging zoom effects.

Founder/team narratives involve a founder or team member announcing the product to the camera. These can work, but a frequent failure made is overly focusing on the founder/team/company narrative rather than what the customer really cares about — the product/feature you are launching and the core value propositions that you defined earlier.

For the vast majority of product/feature launch videos, you should keep focus on getting the core value propositions across clearly in the first 30 seconds. If you then want to extend the video with additional information you can, but understand that unless you have the editing ability of Mr. Beast, only our most committed users will continue watching.

Landing pages

For tier 1 launches, you should treat your landing page as a product and put in the time to make it great. Here are two useful prompts:

• How could we get the user to experience the "wow" moment as quickly as possible? For example, you can use the Text to Speech model without creating an account at https://elevenlabs.io/text-to-speech
• How can we make this page so exceptionally designed that it goes viral? For example, the site we made for the ElevenLabs Worldwide Hackathon at https://hackathon.elevenlabs.io (viral tweet).

You should consider the SEO for your site. If done correctly, the launch will drive backlinks which will start to get it ranking.

Blog posts

Particularly for technical products, blog posts often give you the additional space to dive into the data and details of your new product/feature. Check out Mistral's 7B model for a great example of this approach.

Driving distribution of your launch

Now you have your launch assets, it's time to get them out to your audience.

Publish to all the channels

Follow your checklist and share in all the relevant channels to your audience — this likely means X/Twitter but also LinkedIn, BlueSky, Threads, HackerNews, ProductHunt and anywhere else your audience hangs out. It might be a different channel than you'd expect that goes viral or drives traffic. You should be able to repurpose your messaging and core assets quite quickly for the other channels.

Leveraging your network and influencers

The most viral posts often start with a re-post from someone that already has a significant audience. Tier 1 launches are a great time to ask friends, investors and partners for help to make this happen. In addition, you can do paid partnerships with high-profile influencers for an added push.

Getting press for launches

Press can add further reach, legitimacy, and give high-domain authority backlinks. You should build your own Rolodex of journalists who you can tap into for each tier 1 launch. To start building this Rolodex, you can do it yourself through reaching out to journalists that have already covered your company or similar companies. Or you can pay a PR firm to make introductions, just make sure to align with the PR firm that your goal is to have them help you bootstrap your network.

Activating your own team

Your own team should be the first and most active supporters of your launches. Start an #amplify channel on Slack and share each launch there that you want your team to like, repost and comment. Set the culture from the top that everyone should be involved with this.

Ship, measure, learn

Add a calendar placeholder a week after each launch. Do a quick retro in a Slack thread with the team to get input on what could have gone better. Then iterate on your checklist. A quick retro is better than no retro. But don't take too much time away from launching the next product/feature or your other growth initiatives.