The Step-by-Step Pre-Launch Plan We Used To Prepare For Our Startup Launch
Launching a startup or a brand new product is one of the most exciting parts of being a founder. A successful launch is heavily determined by the months of pre-launch prep you do while your product is getting ready.
We haven’t formally launched Fireflies.AI yet, but we’ve spent almost a year in pre-launch mode learning about our customers, tailoring the product, building up our waitlist, and running private betas with different cohorts of users.
Fireflies is an AI note taker for sales calls that dials into your meetings and automatically summarizes your meetings for you.
Validating Our Product Early
Because the technology for our product was much more complicated, we needed to invest a lot of resources in building out the infrastructure. We quickly realized that creating a voice processing engine to ingest millions of conversational data points was no simple undertaking. Yet, we needed to know before we invested months of precious engineering time if this was something users actually needed.
1. Start Talking to Your Potential Customer Segment
Before we even put up a website or write an initial line of code for the note taking product, we spoke to more than 78 potential users across different segments who we thought were potential users.
I either scheduled a call with these folks or had coffee with them in person. 30 of the users came from within my personal network. I got referrals to 25 other people from these initial 30. Those 25 referred me to another 20 and so on.
These customer segments for us included:
- Product Managers — They wanted to use it for their internal team meetings
2. Recruiters —Use case was during candidate screening phone calls
3. Sales Reps — Wanted to use it on their demos and closing calls
4. C-Suite Executives — Looking for a premium product to help the executive assistants
5. VCs/Investors — For intro meetings with founders
The one thing we didn’t know quite well at that point in time was that each segment had a unique workflow that our product would have to fit into.
We created a spreadsheet stack ranking the different needs and goals of each potential user segment. We also validated their intent to pay for this product.
Through these interviews I was able to get a small set of early adopters who were really passionate about what we were going to be solving for them. Some folks were so excited they were willing to put money down to get early access. These were the initial signs that gave my team the green signal to start building.
A major goal in these conversations was finding folks who were willing to have skin in the game. They were excited, vocally sharing the idea of Fireflies with others, and making time to answer questions
2. Set Up a Landing Page With A Clear Call To Action
Based on these conversations we had a general understanding of what the product should do. We created a landing page explaining the product in simple terms. Most importantly we had a call to action button where a user could join our waitlist.
3. Share Progress and Show Proof of the Product
Even if it is a very hacked up version or half a feature we were always vocal with our group of advocates. I would share screenshots over Slack and email and get them more involved in the engineering process.
4. Create a Video that Gives a Taste of the Core Features
When the base product was just about ready, we did a live demo and live streamed the AI note taker in action. This video got several thousand views and helped bring more users to the waitlist. It created a positive buzz. Some folks are able to create viral videos using various guerrilla marketing techniques. Dollar Shave Club is a good example of that.
We wanted to make sure everything we did was product driven so our video was less about marketing and more about showing the technology in action.
5. Discover Where Your Users are Hanging Out
We looked at social groups on Facebook & Linkedin where our users were having interesting conversations. I joined in on the conversations and in the process got to learn more about what they cared about and where they spend the majority of their time. 90% of these conversations were not intended at getting sales.
We wanted to really validate our product without biasing the feedback these folks were giving. Overtime we build enough rapport where I could ask the folks in these groups if they wanted an invite. All my conversations were one on one. I still chat regularly with some of the friends I met through this way.
So often people abuse the social media groups tactics. They will join some random group. The moment they are accepted into that group, they write a spammy post about their product and then just leave.
People ask me why social forums aren’t effective ways to source pre-launch. This is exactly why.
6. Start Writing Content and Engaging your Waitlist
Content for our target audience was a great way to keep our existing wait list interested while also providing relevant content about our space. We started up a blog writing about AI, automation, and workflow specific challenges people were trying to solve during meetings.
If you want a fast and easy way just leverage a platform like Medium. If you want to leverage your efforts for SEO, it’s better to start your own blog site using platforms like Wordpress.
Good content is a great way to build a good brand presence while also starting the SEO wheel. We started getting subscribers to the content who we could engage with.
7. Offer Demos To Hand Hold Initial Users
I had a button on the main site where interested users could schedule demos to learn more about our product. I did this when our product was almost ready but would need more hand holding to deploy.
Demos were a fantastic way to identify those users who were willing to take time to learn more about what we did. Demos also helped roll out our product to some of our first customers when there were still a few bugs.
8. Offer a Small Free Tool or Service
Sometimes this can be a distraction so tread carefully on this one. Few companies are able to pull this off really well. For example Hubspot had a free website checker that would help grade your website. This was a way for them to gather interest and reach out to these folks about their marketing suite afterwards.
Similarly, I know that Grammarly leveraged their plagarism checker to get alot of interested students to use their chrome extension afterwards.
We took an approach where we provided analytics on their meeting schedules when they connected their calendar. It was quick and also part of the overall platform so we did not have to build a tangential feature.
9. Roll Out A Private Beta to a Cohort of Users
When you start rolling out your product for testing, roll it out in cohorts. For one thing, this is a lot easier to manage. It also give you enough time to fix bugs and improve features before pushing it to other users. By the second cohort, the product was strong enough that people were paying for the Fireflies note taker.
This is one of the most powerful aspects of your pre-launch efforts. I got on the phone with every single user. Ask your customers to be brutally honest.
If they aren’t brutally honest then those new users are going to have very little patience. We also built a good stream of advocates for our product who loved the mission and what we were doing. The important point is, your product won’t be perfect, but if you can show how much effort your are putting in to make it better each and everyday, people will be willing to reciprocate and bear with some issues.
You might have heard about the really long and extended private beta that Slack had run before launching.
10. Have A Referral System Baked Into The Private Beta
A Saas product like Fireflies is naturally viral and that was a huge advantage. When meeting notes were shared with colleagues of our beta users, their colleagues were very interested in getting access. We had an invite system on the notes that were sent out that made it easy for our existing users to refer other users into the platform.
11. Launch on Product Hunt & Other Launch Sites
Prepping for a product hunt launch it self is a whole lot of work. I’ll take some time to write a more detailed guide to launching on product hunt in the near future. If you are interested in reading that once it’s ready, connect with me on my messenger page and I’ll shoot it over there.
Many startups think that launching on Product Hunt is the finish line. It’s just the start. It’s going to give you a quick traffic boost, but you have to ask yourself what happens next week when that all dies down.
Leverage product hunt and other launch sites as a way to build an audience. Don’t expect to convert everyone. Focus on your core customer profile. Otherwise, you will end up chasing users who are just there purely to beta test and have no interest in buying your product.
12. Nurture relationships with PR channels
We haven’t spent enough time doing this but to make your launch have the biggest bang for it’s buck, find PR folks who write about your space. They will get inundated with cold requests so don’t be that person who spams PR journalists with mass emails begging them to write your article.
The best way to approach journalists is to do your research and have a friend or colleague refer you to them.
If the PR writer wrote about your friend’s company, that’s a warm opportunity to pursue. If you can coordinate your Product Hunt Launch with PR announcements you will get a lot more mileage.
13. Engage with Influencers
By influencers, I’m talking about folks in your target niche who have the attention of your target users. For us, sales leaders, coaches who are vocal on Linkedin and Twitter are a great segment. Get your product in the hands of influencers. Maybe give them a discount or free access for a couple months. Politely ask if these influencers can share their thoughts on the product with their audience.
I want to repeat again that the launch is just the start. While some say launch early and iterate quickly, I personally believe that iterating on the product through cohorts of users is more valuable to help you focus. The bar for finished Saas products is a lot higher today than it was 5 to 10 years ago. So MVPs for launch no longer cut it. Ask yourself if it is a minimum sellable product.
In Conclusion
Plan everything out from who you are going to engage with to how you are going to track all these people.Most people will stick with a dozen spreadsheets. Think about your processes and ask yourself if your product and team has the bandwidth to support a 1000 new users tomorrow.
When we officially launch, I can’t wait to share the results with all you guys. It’s been a gradual work in progress, but refinement is key to everything with Saas.
Krish is the Co-Founder & CEO @ Fireflies.ai
Connect with us on messenger for more content.
