Being there in beta

This week, our team launched Potluck.

Our first line of code was written on February 18, and we launched the site publicly on June 25. But in those four months, our team actually built two things: a product and a community.

By launch day, our community of beta testers had grown to about 1,000 people, including our siblings, significant others, parents, roommates, college buddies and Twitter friends. It was a diverse group, but each person was included for the same reason: we wanted to build for them. Andrew’s mom didn’t use Branch. Josh’s roommates didn’t “get” publishing online. Our Twitter friends were tired of “success theater.”

Building alongside this community was a special opportunity for our team. This post is both a chance to give them the (very public) thank you they deserve, and to share a little bit about what we learned along the way.

No man is an island. And no team is, either.

Potluck’s launch followed several months of brainstorming, building, tweaking, scrapping, and revising.

Building a product is fun work, but it’s hard work, too. The constant creative churn that comes with it asks a lot of any team, and as ours built Potluck, I learned a lot about the role community can play to support that process.

Typically, beta testers’ role is practical (e.g. reporting bugs). But I think there’s another, less obvious role that was just as valuable to us: Reminding our team that we’re not alone.

Every startup team feels pressure to build a great product and invent clever solutions. Ours is no different. In particular, our designers Cemre and Julius have pushed themselves to get more comfortable moving quickly and pushing out “work in progress” designs. As they designed Potluck, they noticed that the closer they felt to our beta testers, the more comfortable they were iterating on their designs.

Our vibrant community of beta testers helped focus our team and hold us accountable to our goals. The community was our empty chair.

Learn how and when to ask for help.

Our beta testers showed up for us over and over again.

We would often post questions, screenshots, or half-baked ideas directly to Potluck, @mention our friends, and ask for their help. Here are a few examples:

What should we call this app?
Are you a lurker on Potluck?
What do you think of Potluck’s homepage?

Our team was constantly surprised by the community’s response. It was a great reminder of something we all know but don’t act on nearly enough: If you give people an opportunity to help you, they will.

I also noticed two things begin to happen. First, because our whole team jumped into in these conversations, our whole team got to know the community better. This meant that everyone — designers and engineers alike — got better at anticipating their feedback. Second, as our community continued to talk to us, their ownership over the product and their experience grew. Even if their feedback wasn’t acted on immediately, they knew they were being heard.

While I can’t quantify these interactions’ impact on the product we launched on Tuesday, I’m excited about the precedent it’s set for our team and for Potluck.

Even though our community is even bigger than 1,000 people and even more diverse, we’re excited to keep building alongside it, and keep seeing what we still have to learn.