<story><title>Aaron Swartz: How To Launch Software</title><url>http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/howtolaunch</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tptacek</author><text>37Signals has launched four (4) commercial products, and takes in (by my guess, from headcount and subscription numbers) mid-high 7 figures from them.&lt;p&gt;Aaron Swartz has launched, by my count, &lt;i&gt;no&lt;/i&gt; successful products (unless I&apos;m wrong and Reddit wasn&apos;t already a success story when he got there).&lt;p&gt;From Aaron&apos;s own web page, here&apos;s what I get when I click on his &quot;my day job&quot; link:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.flickr.com/photos/29804691@N02/2786744327/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.flickr.com/photos/29804691@N02/2786744327/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Why am I being such a dick about this? Because the argument he&apos;s making is disingenuous. Aaron advocates for an extended friends-and-family beta before launch. Aaron has no idea what 37signals does to beta and dogfood their product before the &quot;Hollywood Launch&quot;. From what I can tell, everything 37signals does happens just before &quot;step 5&quot; in his master plan.&lt;p&gt;The difference between 37signals and Aaron Swartz isn&apos;t methodology. Methodology is a band-aid. The difference between Aaron Swartz and 37signals is &lt;i&gt;ability to execute&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;Here&apos;s a much better writeup from a much more credible source on the same topic:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/PickingShipDate.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/PickingShipDate.html&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>gojomo</author><text>The &apos;Hollywood Launch&apos; can work if you already have notoriety to leverage, and already have the experience/userbase to do iterative improvement/testing internally. Steve Jobs is master of the Hollywood Launch.&lt;p&gt;If you&apos;re a small, young team making your first product, the dream of a &apos;Hollywood Launch&apos; is destructive. It causes you to delay getting bulk feedback from disinterested strangers. It slows the organic learning/testing loop. It delays launch as you try to ensure you&apos;ll make a good first impression. And as Aaron notes, there&apos;s always something that goes wrong on a contrived &apos;big day&apos;.&lt;p&gt;Steve Jobs and Apple on their umpteenth launch can usually keep those glitches to a minimum. (But not always: see MobileMe.) 37signals on their Nth launch of another webapp in the same mold as their other N-1 apps can pull this off, too.&lt;p&gt;But a young team launching a brand-new product will gain more from a measured ramp-up than an engineered hype-storm. They should listen to Aaron.</text></comment>
<story><title>Aaron Swartz: How To Launch Software</title><url>http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/howtolaunch</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tptacek</author><text>37Signals has launched four (4) commercial products, and takes in (by my guess, from headcount and subscription numbers) mid-high 7 figures from them.&lt;p&gt;Aaron Swartz has launched, by my count, &lt;i&gt;no&lt;/i&gt; successful products (unless I&apos;m wrong and Reddit wasn&apos;t already a success story when he got there).&lt;p&gt;From Aaron&apos;s own web page, here&apos;s what I get when I click on his &quot;my day job&quot; link:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.flickr.com/photos/29804691@N02/2786744327/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.flickr.com/photos/29804691@N02/2786744327/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Why am I being such a dick about this? Because the argument he&apos;s making is disingenuous. Aaron advocates for an extended friends-and-family beta before launch. Aaron has no idea what 37signals does to beta and dogfood their product before the &quot;Hollywood Launch&quot;. From what I can tell, everything 37signals does happens just before &quot;step 5&quot; in his master plan.&lt;p&gt;The difference between 37signals and Aaron Swartz isn&apos;t methodology. Methodology is a band-aid. The difference between Aaron Swartz and 37signals is &lt;i&gt;ability to execute&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;Here&apos;s a much better writeup from a much more credible source on the same topic:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/PickingShipDate.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/PickingShipDate.html&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>spolsky</author><text>When you&apos;re finished with the ad hominem part of your attack, I&apos;d just like to weigh in and say that Aaron got this exactly right.</text></comment>