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Mila Dymnikova

Is it okay to launch a product before all the features are ready?

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There's been a lot of great discussions about launch advice. Many people have said that launching early is better than waiting to have everything perfect. I'm launching a product tracking tool soon – while the core functions are working and we've got the minimal version (or MVP) of the product, I feel a bit shy about promoting the features that are not fully built. What do you think?

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Matt Bucklin
Just don't spend too much on marketing. Find the beach head market.
Mila Dymnikova
@mattbucklin So you mean like don't fluff around too much in marketing, instead get really specific on who to target for early launch. Yeah?
Matt Bucklin
@mila_dymnikova thanks for saying it better than I did. Yes, figure out who is most likely to use it and find out.
Deluar Hosain
I think launching early is a good strategy to get feedback from your potential customers and validate your product idea. However, you should also be transparent about the features that are not fully built and set clear expectations for your users. You can use phrases like "coming soon", "in development", or "beta" to indicate that your product is not complete yet. You can also ask your users for their opinions and suggestions on improving your product and making it more valuable for them. This way, you can build trust and loyalty with your users and show them that you care about their needs and problems.
Mila Dymnikova
@deluar_001 Yeah thank you for your suggestion – even just a small phrase like "In Development" feels like it's honest but not under promoting the feature. Thanks for sharing!
Dogyun Jeong
As an engineer, I think launching as early as possible is better to build a better product. The requirements could be changed by customer feedback. When a product has a lot of features, sometimes changing core requirements would take more than developing from the bottom. Also if a team keeps a product with internal tests, It could incubate more bugs as real users act unexpectedly. Probably product owners/managers should consider when is earlies time to launch as there must be some minimum values to attract customers Sales/marketing also take resources. However, if it is hard to re-deploy products like internal installed products, totally different story
Mila Dymnikova
@dogyun_jeong Yeah great points Dogyun! We built mini digital from our own needs of tracking our other product so it's already live and we have good testing coverage. It's really lightweight and we built a lot of automation in place to make our lives easier. Last few months we decided we could open it up for others to use so that's how we got here. What are you launching soon?
Dogyun Jeong
@mila_dymnikova That sounds promising. It would be much smoother to handle things as you have good test coverage! Once you open it up, you would be able to get much faster for building a product. Even a small amount of customers' behaviors are totally different than internal members. Hope you make a great product! Btw what product are you building? We are gonna launching a micro-training tool that utilizes existing Notion pages. It easily turns a Notion page into bite-sized mobile cards. It will enable you to deliver them via SMS and tracks individual viewership. Below is our profile https://www.producthunt.com/prod...
Mila Dymnikova
@dogyun_jeong We've built https://mini.digital/ It's a super lightweight and privacy focused tool for collecting web/product analytics so it's an alternative to Google Analytics. We're also offering online training workshops for product tracking strategy to help teams get started 🙌
Launching early is always the best option unless and until you are working on something groundbreaking. Besides that, showcasing features in the pipeline is fine unless you overdo it. In fact, by launching early, you get early feedback which lets you build, prioritize, and ship the right features. Even modify the nuances of feature assumptions you would already have.
Mila Dymnikova
@senthil99nathan yeah I guess it's the way you communicate it, and early feedback is sooo valuable. How do you feel about adding "In development" tag/phrase to features that are not ready yet?
@mila_dymnikova , I'd say not to. You can continue updating your feature list on your site as you progress. For eg, if you are currently building a chat feature, add it without blatantly stating that it is in progress. This way you will always have something new every week or fortnight to show your prospects. And to add on, adding "In development/In progress" doesn't really give a great impression. So instead of stating, when you go on a demo call with a prospect, focus on all the features you already have and just leave a note somewhere in between on the features that are in progress in a cohesive way. This should do the job if you ask me. :)
Lori King
Launching a product with a minimum viable set of features allows for continuous improvement through iterative development cycles, enabling the company to gather valuable user feedback and make necessary improvements while the product is already in the market.
Mila Dymnikova
@king22l I guess it's a million dollar question to know how to decide on where to draw the line 😂 Have you had to make this kind of decision before?
Alexis Collado
Think about the potential retention and churn. What I think matters is you have an entire product loop closed as part of your MVP.
Mila Dymnikova
@alexiscollado Yesss "entire product loop" is how I've been thinking about this launch. I think that we have the MVP-product loop completed and the additional features are sitting in a wider/broader loop.
Alexis Collado
@mila_dymnikova That's a great start! If you've nailed down the must-haves in order to launch, then go for it and you can finally have some early feedback loops to refine the product even more :) good luck Mila! 😄
Jannat Patel
If you keep making everything perfect then there will never be a perfect time to launch. Work keeps expanding. So just launch, get feedback, and keep building on that.
John Carmichael
We launched Liffery last week here on PH... the platform is strong, but there are some big features that connect all the dots that are still a work in progress. Here is the difference between two of my recent launches: https://www.liffery.com > polished but not complete but proven need way ahead of launch and a lot effort in communication via the landing pages. 600+ votes and product of the day award and 100's and 100's of new users. https://www.translation-strings.com -> not polished and not complete with only a Loom video roughly explaining... no awards, not many upvotes and not many user signups. So our conclusion is that if you are going to launch, you don't need a 100% product, but a 30% product is also no good. Liffery right now is about 75% there and for us... we think we hit a sweet spot. Of course, if you are building something that is AI-focused... it seems everyone goes nuts for it! So... maybe launching with only an HTML/CSS landing page is enough to prove. There was a cool product launched here the other week just for that, Momentum I think they were called.
Mila Dymnikova
@john_carmichael Thanks for sharing your experience! 👀 I'm not building AI product, but it is a data product!
Raisa Shafiyyullah
I would say yes, so that you can get early feedback and fix early. It's okay to be shy, and you can always be honest if you're still working on the feature or if the feature is not yet ready.
Unknown User
Interesting comments here. However, I've seen products launched here with the core promise of a specific feature and while trying it the feature was not yet available. I lost track of it and sadly, interest. I think we need to act fast or launch, and ask for feedback without promising things are not available.
Mila Dymnikova
@andres_rivera3 Yesss. Yeah the loss of traction is partly what's made me feel unsure about advertising features that aren't built yet. Do you have any thoughts on how that product could have communicated better about the state of its development?
Unknown User
@mila_dymnikova Yes. It could have included an explanation about the second release of features with specific dates if possible. Or have an email address request form to get notified as soon as the product is released. Meanwhile, you could nurture the lead with more info about the company, goals, plans, etc.
In my opinion, prioritizing a fast launch is more favorable. However, based on my experience, finding the right balance between determining the minimum viable product (MVP) and avoiding "lazy thinking" is also important. It is generally advisable to release your product or service early and conduct thorough testing, as long as the cost of acquisition is not overly expensive. One good way to go about it is to consider your initial 100 customers as valuable sources of learning rather than immediate profit generators. Establish clear objectives for your MVP - what needs to be measured, how it will be measured, and for what duration. Additionally, as mentioned by @deluar_001, designate beta tags for features that are not fully developed and encourage active feedback from users.
Karol Andruszków
There will always be some features needed, especially in a rapidly changing tech world. 9 years ago we released BOWWE to the market with basic features and they helped us build it - with their needs. I recommend this approach.
Mila Dymnikova
@karol_andruszkow Thanks for sharing. So how do you make the decision on what features to include in the MVP? I feel like the answer might be really simple: the core functionality works 😄
Karol Andruszków
@mila_dymnikova In my case it was that I already had some potential clients for the tool before it even was created. I knew exactly what they needed after hours of talking to them. They were by old business partners and needed a website & didn't want to play on their own with WordPress as it lacked flexibility without proper programming knowledge, so I did it for them. After a time, as businesses grew I thought it would be easier if I just handled them a tool with which they can do it themselves - NoCode.
Mila Dymnikova
@karol_andruszkow That sounds like a perfect execution of creating a product. I'm sure there were still enough challenges in between the successes but this is motivating :)
Karol Andruszków
@mila_dymnikova It was a nice start idea, and there were definitely many ups and downs, but nothing we could not face as passionate.
Alice White
Companies might obtain an edge in the market by releasing a product before all of its features are complete. This allows them to begin making money, building their brand, and attracting early adopters as they continue to develop the product and add features.
Mila Dymnikova
@alicew88a Yeah, there's a lot of advice for startups to "build in public" and "build a community" so I guess you'll have to launch early and manage the story of how complete the product really is.
Krishna Kumar
It is absolutely ok. In fact that is what everyone does
Fabian Maume
You have the option to relaunch after 6 months if you release a major feature. So it will take you more than 6 months to finish the product you can launch an MVP to start collecting feedback. However, it is important to have a working onboarding to launch. From my experience launching a landing page with a waiting list doesn't work on Product hunt.
Absolutely - you can get some great feedback from users. You can always launch again after 6 months too
Sanjay Somashekar
Launching to get initial product feedback is really important than building out everything and not have the relevant audience to use.
Jay Phelps
Straight up, yes. It's pretty common in the tech space. Even giants like Facebook and Twitter started with a MVP (Minimum Viable Product) approach. Launch early, get user feedback, iterate, and improve. Just ensure the core functionality is solid and provides value to your users.
Mila Dymnikova
@jayphelpsme 🚀 yep core functionality is already in use for our other products/websites. So I guess just ship it!
Jack Davies
Your competitors are doing it, why shouldn't you? Just keep those users in the loop with updates on new features. They'll appreciate the transparency. Don't forget, done is better than perfect.
Oscar Mairey
MVP stands for Minimum Viable Product. As long as your product is Viable everything should work fine!