How I Blew My Product Launch — Before I Even Started My App

A Cautionary Tale

No moment in any creative professional’s life is so fraught with excitement, anxiety, exultation, and sheer terror as the launch of a new product.

It’s so terrifying, in fact, it’s tempting to ignore it. Pretend it’s not looming ahead, like a malevolent stranger lurking in the shadows of a dark alley. Or more accurately, a deep bottomless pit into which your time, reputation, money, hopes and dreams may fall.

It doesn’t matter if it’s software, a brick-and-morter gift shop, a self-published book, a work of art, a photograph.

Or in my case, an app on Apple’s platform.

We walk ahead, keeping our eyes on the sky instead of the road ahead. We tell ourselves stories. “It’s going to be fine!” we think, and “I’ll figure it out as I go along.” We say to ourselves, “I’ll soft launch. That way, if anything goes wrong, I can fix it quietly,” while we secretly believe the opposite: it will take off despite our inaction, despite our unwillingness to orchestrate a launch, because the product is just so damned awesome.

And it if doesn’t take off? “Well,” we can safely say, “that’s just because I haven’t done any marketing yet.” That, we know deep down, is a far better scenario than the opposite: we market the hell…