Running Lean, 3rd Edition

Chapter 12. Get Ready to Launch

By this time, you definitely understand your customers’ needs better than you did just a few weeks ago, and you have a much clearer definition of your MVP. Continue to be wary, though, of the Innovator’s Bias. It’s still fairly easy to get distracted during this stage and either build too much or build the wrong product.

In addition to staying razor-focused on building out your MVP, you’ll need to focus on a few other housekeeping items in order to optimize your product launch for speed, learning, and focus.

Running a big launch campaign or a PR stunt isn’t one of those things. Trying to build a lot of buzz or garner media attention for an unproven product is premature optimization. Even if you succeed at generating a lot of traffic to your product, unless you have something compelling to make them stay, that traffic will quickly dissipate.

A much better strategy is to separate your product launch from your marketing launch. Your product launch is best implemented as a soft launch to early adopters where your key objective is validating for value delivery (i.e., whether you’ve delivered on your unique value proposition).

Only when you can repeatedly demonstrate value delivery to your customers is a big marketing launch warranted.

This chapter will show you how to optimize your product launch for speed, learning, and focus.

Figure 12-1 shows what this looks like on a 90-day cycle. Aim to build your MVP in four sprints or less (two months), spend ...