How to do launch weeks for developer tools, startups, and small teams

What is a launch week anyway?

A launch week is a week densely packed with content and activities designed to announce and explain new releases from different angles. Approaches can range from blog posts and meetups devoted to new features to bounty programs and swag giveaways.

The story of Supabase and developer tool launch weeks

The concept of the “launch week” was well established even before coming to the tech world, but Supabase, an open source Firebase alternative, was the pioneer who rethought this format for developer tools.

And Supabase’s story is quite interesting! During their time participating in startup accelerator Y Combinator, they felt a sense of excitement and adrenaline related to the numerous activities involved with the program.

These including intensive building efforts as well as the mindset of shouting about new products as loudly as possible and the solid response with an increase in user acquisition and activation/retention rates.

But then, after graduating from YC, Supabase had to organize support on their own. Thus, they decided to ship one major feature or announcement every day for a week.

Dozens of dev-first founders and marketers have already tried these launch weeks, and you can check this repository that tracks past and upcoming launch weeks to guide you and provide inspiration as you plan and promote your own launch weeks.

Why launch weeks are a good fit for small teams

We tried launch week for our own Open Core product AnyCable, so we can personally confirm the effectiveness of this approach. We saw a substantial boost in free trials of AnyCable Pro: in July, the month of our launch week, we had 5X trials vs. previous months, (excluding February, when we also had a 2X boost attributable to RailsConf).

Irina Nazarova CEO at Evil Martians

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But beyond our own experience, launch weeks can be a life-saving marketing strategy for smaller teams for two reasons.

First of all, it’s something that works well when resources are scarce. Since a “launch week” is limited in time, you simply do everything needed for several sub-projects at once, helping or focus and organize the essentials, rather than stretching out preparation and announcements for a long time, like in the case of sequential promotion.

Second, it’s effective since a potential customer must encounter a brand’s marketing messages at least seven times before making a purchase. (At least, according to the Marketing Rule of 7.) This week-long promotional scheme is the perfect chance to make that exposure happen. When your customers can learn about your product from different trusted sources within a short period of time, it draws much more attention to them.

How to maximize your resources for launch week

So, what kind of strategies can teams utilize to make launch weeks even more economical in terms of resources? Here are some quick tips.

#1: Sprint it out. Dedicate time to the launch within your typical sprint planning. And do this or your entire team. For instnace, build during 10 weeks, then do marketing during 2 weeks. Repeat.

#2: Use what you have. Maybe you know a podcast host, or you’ve already recorded some videos. Perhaps you’re a meme master, or can push out some really cool, useful technical content.

#3: Keep the scope achievable and real. Don’t plan big projects, and instead, plan small ones that 1-2 people can pull off in 0.5-3 days. At the outset, you can expect 80% of your marketing efforts to be in vain, but fail fast, and keep iterating.

#4: Optimize pre-launch validation. Before your full launch, validate your prototypes and marketing messages with existing customers or lookalikes. Gather reactions to messaging, and if they’re not excited, what do they actually care about? That said, do not act on a single piece of feedback. Instead, look for patterns (like 5/10 positive responses) to guide your strategy. Focus on audiences with the strongest initial reactions.

How to actually prep for a launch week

Now, let’s actually talk about preparing and planning and evaluation your launch week. We’ll divide the process into these 4 stages:

Stage 1: Pre-set: Here, we’ll define the scope of features to present. This can include annoncing features that were developed earlier—or which even recall some existing ones. (That said, be flexible, since there will always be something that won’t be ready in time for release).

You can also use this time to think about relevant metrics to gather (like downloads, signups, GitHub stars, activations), and bottlenecks you might encounter.

Stage 2: Pre-launch: At this point, it’s time to evaluate the content you’ll and how much time your engineers will have to invest in it.

Then, you’ll have to create that content! But remember, some types of content (like videos or documentation), require quite a lot of time to prepare. Then, be sure to enlist the support of partners, current enterprise users, and people in the community who believe in your product to help distribute it.

Then, when everything is ready, release a “coming soon” teaser to attract more attention.

Stage 3: Launch Week: It’s go time. Schedule all publications—that is, create a calendar with the publication times dates and times. Then, publish all the content accordingy to your plan and watch that feedback like a hawk.

Stage 4: The Retrospective: Analyze your results and consider how to continue communicating with your users.

How to make launch week content

The best thing about launch week is that it doesn’t necessarily just have to be about your new releases!

In fact, according to Supabase, “You can launch a new feature many times over and manage to reach people who either forgot, ignored, or just plain missed it the first few times.”

Additionally, you can use the same methods and platforms that you have used before. Let’s say you already had a launch on Product Hunt—well, you can do it again with a new announcement or feature. Just be sure to follow their rule that you must “Wait at least six months in between posts for the same product or from the same company.”

How to find engaging topics and formats? We recommend identifying your ideal customer profile (ICP) based on the real users you already acquired.

Then, you can plan your activity based on the channels you can use to reach your ICP and prepare different messages and content for them. Let’s run down the stuff to keep in mind:

1. Check what they read: Reddit, Hacker News, social media. Tech newsletters (if so, which ones?). Useful news. Good blogs (maybe even yours or a partner’s blog). Then, plan posts for them. This could be a series on a specific topic, like an announcement and a guide on a new feature, or a benchmark.
2. Find out what they watch: look for relevant YouTube influencer channels, YouTube shorts, educational courses (like Egghead.io), webinars, Q&A sessions, and so on.
3. Go where they chat: share what you’ve got in relevant Slack groups, Discord groups, on X, and so forth.
4. Be aware of what they listen to: tech podcasts, X spaces.
5. Be where they are: meetups, hackathons (both coding and content ones), conferences. You can participate by delivering a talk, organizing a booth, or sponsoring the event.
6. Be where they search for good products, like ProductHunt, or DevHunt.
7. Look at how they communicate with the community. Bounty programs, prize draws, swag giveaways, and ambassador programs are all relevant here.
8. Find out how exactly they are involved in product development: this could include customer development, surveys, voting for the most highly demanded features, price discounts, free trials.
9. Think about what your audience likes to talk or laugh about. Be creative! Yes, and of course, memes. But do you have a shocking benchmark of your product and a giant competitor from your industry? (I’m not saying you should place ads on milk boxes in SF, but maybe!)

The pros and cons of launch weeks

Alright, if you’ve come this far, you’ve already got a good idea of the work ahead of you! That said, just to make sure this approach makes sense for you, and that you’re prepared to avoid any pitfalls, let’s run through the pros and cons of this approach before we end.

Pro #1: More opportunity for engagement. There is the old public relations adage, “Bad news travels fast. Good news takes the scenic route”, which means if you have good news, take a long-tail approach because also allows for more “touch points” for getting people’s awareness.

Pro #2: Gain momentum, even for small things. This applies when you’ve got a bunch of different things to get out there, but some wouldn’t be announced individually otherwise. Perhaps a small features or swag giveaways, but when wrapped up as part of a larger launch week, they can get shine a lot brighter.

Pro #3: Unlocking a faster feedback loop. With a launch week, you’ll also be able to get quicker feedback for your entire portfolio of new features at once.

And while that last point is fantastic—you’ll also be hit with an influx of issues, too, so let’s pivot to the cons.

Con #1: A flood of bugs. Bugs, breakages, and feature requests may flood in from every angle—and for an early-stage startup (or one that currently doesn’t have enough engineering resources), this prospect may not sound so great. This con can be especially relevant, if you’re already working on new major features or migrating your entire stack to new technology.

You’ll also get those classic last-minute bugs that come right before launch! This is why your support team should also be fully prepared for this if you decide to go for a launch week, and you need to set up channels for feedback in advance. Otherwise, you’ll be receiving it in public spaces, not such a good luck.

Additionally, enable your engineers to answer questions and review new pull requests (if you have an open source product), and prepare your sales team to engage customers who are interested in new products immediately.

Con #2: Might not be useful for really small products. Let’s say you have an early growth stage company with a few enterprise clients and you simply communicate with them via dedicated Slack channels. In a case like this, it may be easier and faster to notify them about new features directly instead of wasting resources on a full-fledged promotional campaign. At least until point where you need to scale up.

Con #3: Overwhelming for newcomers. If you’re holding a launch week for the first time ever, you’ll have to answer a ton of critical questions at the same time: why do we need this, what’s our end goal for this, how do we know if we’re moving in the right direction? Who’s responsible for what? Who’s more important in this project—marketing people or developers? Which channels to focus on? That’s a lot! And coordinating all the people from all those areas is also a lot to deal with.

Con #4: It may not fit your coding schedule. Some teams need to (and are able to) ship relentlessly (for instance, you’ve just have secured a round of funding, and you need to grow fast and speed up your delivery). But when you’re building so much new stuff, you may prefer not to bundle them into weeks but to launch them depending on your own schedule, for example, announce every calendar week.

Con #5: You might not have enough. If you’re just beginning your journey, you may not have enough releases to organize a full launch week. In this case, it’s also more convenient and logical to announce new functions, plans, and capabilities as soon as they pop up.

Give it to me straight: is it worth trying this?

So, recently, we’ve been seeing the “launch week” trending a lot. Yet, there is no absolute evidence yet that the launch weeks yield better results than individual launches spread out over a larger period of time.

So, perhaps the real question to consider is this: which flow is a better fit for your team? This answer may not come fast, but if you feel that launch weeks may work well for you, there is no reason not to try one!

And don’t let a fear of failure stop you! They may very well eventually just know you as an “overnight success”. But remember this: an “overnight success” is often the result of many preceeding weeks, and your own success will likely come from multiple iterations and the learning you derive from previous launches. Stay persistent, data-driven, and keep lauching!

And one more thing: the idea of this post originated from one of the issues of our newsletter, “Founders Ask,” where we share what we’ve learned from consulting successful devtools startups. So, sign up and ask your question, too!