<story><title>How To Go From Idea To Launching With Paying Customers In 8 Steps</title><url>http://jasonlbaptiste.com/featured-articles/how-to-go-from-idea-to-launching-with-paying-customers-in-8-steps/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>jacquesm</author><text>I think this post is great but the period after launch is seriously underexposed in all these &apos;how to start-up&apos; articles.&lt;p&gt;Typically, if you&apos;re a hands-on person with the right attitude sooner or later you&apos;ll figure this part out. Posts like this can help you ease the pain a bit but then what?&lt;p&gt;You&apos;ve just launched, you have a few paying customers (but not enough to be profitable), your initial press powder has been shot. Traffic collapses to near non-existent levels and your first customers do not seem to be going out of their way to tell their friends about your product.&lt;p&gt;That&apos;s a &lt;i&gt;much&lt;/i&gt; harder problem to solve than just to get to the launch date.&lt;p&gt;Launching something is like a marriage, the first honeymoon period with a new fledgling company.&lt;p&gt;If it works out during the &apos;dating&apos; period you might end up marrying the wrong company, or it may be the right one but it will require skills and expertise that you do not have that go way beyond coding or talking to your existing circle of potential customers.&lt;p&gt;That&apos;s when the real work starts. Getting to launch is the easy bit.</text></comment>
<story><title>How To Go From Idea To Launching With Paying Customers In 8 Steps</title><url>http://jasonlbaptiste.com/featured-articles/how-to-go-from-idea-to-launching-with-paying-customers-in-8-steps/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>Swizec</author><text>Great list, but I don&apos;t think you need the detailed spec. Same problem as usual in developoment: the spec will be outdated by the time you&apos;re even half done, when you&apos;re finished with the first version of the product your detailed spec will be so woefully out of date (or a huge time sink to keep updated) that you&apos;ll end up rewriting it.&lt;p&gt;What you do need is a defined documentation of your internal/public API&apos;s. If the developers don&apos;t know how modules talk to one another that&apos;s a recipe for fail. Then just to keep everything coherent, a rough skeleton to keep everyone on track. Basically a mix between your step 2 and step 5.</text></comment>