I’m on my fourth product at Hopin.

I helped lead the launch of the Events platform in 2019 (acquired by RingCentral), StreamYard Business in 2021, Session in 2022 (acquired by RingCentral), and now I’m working on Superwave with an upcoming launch in 2024.

Before Hopin, I launched more than half a dozen products, including Efographic (SaaS), Party Qs (App), Entrepreneur’s Handbook (Media Publication), Writing Revenue (Course), Medium Writing Course, and Runaway Millionaire (Book).

Of the 10+ products that my teams and I have launched in the last 10 years, half of them succeeded, half failed. It’s not a perfect batting average, but considering that 9 out of 10 startups fail, it’s not terrible.

Product launches are hard. There’s never a “right time” to launch, which is why many products flop. But when they succeed, whew, there’s nothing better.

Over the years, I’ve seen what works and what doesn’t work.

Here is the exact process to de-risk your next product launch and bring a new product successfully to market:

The Product Launch Handbook

A step-by-step guide to the 17 phases of a Successful Product Launch; from starting with an idea to generating millions in revenue.

1. You get an idea.

It aaaaall starts when you, dear founder, get an idea for a product. It should solve a clear pain point or problem.

2. Write it down.

This exercise alone can fizzle your early excitement. The process of putting an idea into written words can kill it. Good thing, too. Better to be deterred from an empty idea on day one or two than after you’ve committed or invested heavily in it.

3. Share it with people. 

Get feedback, reactions, and gauge interest from friends, family, and anyone who will listen. Pay close attention to two things: how serious you are about it because of you’re willingness to tell your friends about it, and two, your elevator pitch. If you’re not serious, or you think it’s too silly to share, it’s a sign you might not believe in it. If people give you any feedback, that’s a win. If people don’t care at all, it’s not a sign to stop, but rather a sign you need to refine your elevator pitch. Make it shorter and punchier — focus more on the pain it solves.

4. Build a simple landing page. 

Now the work begins. Pretend the product exists already and make a one-page marketing website for it. Write the landing page and make sure it clearly states the problem you’re solving, how you’re solving it, and how it’s different. You’ll also need to invent some sort of brand and if you can, early mockups. If you’re feeling gutsy: buy a $12 domain for this website.

5. Start collecting email addresses.

Use the webpage to collect emails via a form. Don’t announce it, just send the link to folks in a direct message or email. Measure the conversion rate, bounce rate, and responses to your direct messages. Silence is a sign that it’s not going well. But if people are spending time on the page and putting their email in, you have a positive signal.

6. Add pricing and accept preorders. 

This is when it starts to get real. Hire a designer (contractor) to refine the brand and create high-fidelity mockups of the product. Again, you’re still not investing in building the actual product. You’re still validating and legitimizing a brand with a compelling product. It’s difficult to sell anything if your website doesn’t look professional. Add a low, medium, and high pricing tier by making the low tier the waitlist, the medium tier the preorder, and the high tier a bulk order or a consulting add-on (where you are the consultant).

7. Start marketing. 

Publish a weekly newsletter, get your brand social handles and start posting, and look into targeted partnerships. Be willing to spend a few thousand dollars on sponsorships and light ad experiments. Aim to boost traffic, waitlist signups, and preorders. This process helps you refine your offer and the positioning of the product, identify your Ideal Customer Profile, and ultimately, validate product-market fit before investing a ton of cash in product development. You’re setting up your growth engine and able to construct key metrics like conversion rates, ROAS and CAC.

8. Build the prototype. 

Once you have a large waitlist or enough pressure coming from your first couple of preorders asking when the product will be ready, it’s time to pull the trigger on building a prototype. Don’t order large quantities, your first product will likely not be perfect. Don’t worry about profit margins for now. It’s okay to lose money on this first run. The important part is to get the MVP of your product created. Depending on the complexity of your product, you may want to kick off this step at the same time as #6.

9. Ship the beta. 

Once the MVP is ready, ship it as a “beta product” to your preorders, early brand advocates, and highest referrers. Hopefully, your product is differentiated enough that word of mouth kicks in once customers receive it. It should solve their problem really well and surprise them with something unexpected that knocks their socks off.

10. Ask for feedback. 

If the beta isn’t an instant hit, which it probably won’t, don’t worry about it. As long as it doesn’t bomb, you can iterate on it based on feedback you receive from your users. Ask them directly for feedback. Get on calls. Do things that don’t scale to build a community of fans as you improve the MVP into a better V1.

11. Collect customer stories.

As your customers use and enjoy your early product, capture all positive testimonials, social comments, and mentions of your product and add these to your landing page to build social proof.

12. Reassess. 

You should start seeing month-over-month growth at this stage. If you’re not, you may need to closely examine the product and positioning of the product to make sure it’s solving a specific problem, solving it better than any other solution, and clearly positioned (and priced) for the market you’re in. If it’s trying to serve too broad of a market, then consider niching down. Return to Step #6.

13. Add a little hype.

If you are seeing month-over-month growth, tell people about it. Show growth graphs, take screenshots, and tell the stories of how fast your business is growing. A little hype goes a long way to amplify word of mouth.

14. Implement two growth levers:

1) affiliate program and 2) public relations. Extend a generous affiliate program to your community. Let them sell your product for you and split the revenue with them. For PR, take your best growth data and biggest customer logos and pitch a journalist the origin story.

15. Invest in your brand merch. 

Reward your community with swag to thank them for sticking with you and providing early feedback.

16. Fundraise, if you want.

Once you start getting covered in headlines, you have everything you need to put together a strong pitch deck to bring on investors. Depending on the complexity of your product, this step might need to happen at the same time as #8.

17. Scale your team. 

Funding secured, it’s time to grow your team and build out V2 of the product. By this point, you should be on track to know when you’ll reach millions of annual revenue.

Let me know if you’d like to hear more about one of these phases. Happy to do a deeper dive.

Thanks for reading.

See you next Thursday.

Dave