On [re]launching
It’s now been two weeks since Beme relaunched. We spent four months radically rethinking the majority of the app while trying not to screw up something special we had built for the tens of thousands of users who were still using the app every day in spite of its flaws.
Every launch is sheer terror. All the engagement data and all the user interviews in the world can’t tell you whether what you’ve made actually works, those are just little nods of encouragement. Will long-time users ragequit? Will the tech press eviscerate you? Did you provision enough servers and suss out enough of the bottlenecks? Is it simply too late to turn things around?
I’m a bit of a junkie for the launch day terror—I’d even call it fun. To have gone through a few dozen launches of one sort or another and yet keep coming back, I had to learn to love that feeling. Like any crisis you pour all of your adrenaline into, the day after the launch is always a minor letdown. “The pleasure of expecting enjoyment is often greater than that of obtaining it” etc etc. Though with launches, it’s not so much a wish attained as a new and more terrifyingly nebulous set of wishes revealed.
Onward! We’re rolling along reinvigorated by hundreds of thousands of new users, with plenty to build for them in the coming weeks.
This week’s issue is appropriately about putting app launches in perspective.
Self-promotion
Building A New Social App Today is Insane
My thoughts on the relaunch, and why we’re pushing against the current with Beme.
No matter how hard you’re working on something, it’s important to have intellectual distraction. Mine for the past few months has been VR. I wrote about why I’m bullish on VR and what tools I really wish existed. (BONUS: embarrassing childhood photo)
Relaunching is hard: Digg
The original Digg.com was one of the darlings of the pre-mobile internet wave, right on par with Tumblr. Yet in 2010 it did a relatively straightforward redesign and rebuild and almost instantly failed. There are plenty of compelling post hoc explanations of what went wrong, including Kevin Rose’s own, but honestly, no one can predict a catastrophic failure like this or uncover its “root cause.” Imploding overnight is a real risk to building high-speed social products. Remarkably, Digg also successfully re-relaunched with a killer new team over at betaworks and is still doing quite well in its third incarnation.
And launching major games is harder
In consumer tech, high-budget video games are probably the most stressful launches imaginable. $250-500 million of eggs are all in one basket. If you get it right, you make that back by 1-2 days after launch. And if you got it wrong…
AAA game development is high-risk gambling | Polygon
Making games is hard. Making AAA games is close to impossible.
Pixel pressures | The Economist
A blockbuster launch may bring an extra life to British games makers
... But launching planes is the hardest
You don’t know if a new aircraft design is truly a success until 10+ years after it goes on sale, which is likely 20 years after work began
Airbus A380 Haunted by Feeble Orders Marks Decade in Skies - Bloomberg
At the tender age of 10, the Airbus A380 is already entering a mid-life crisis.
By Matt Hackett
I'm an entrepreneur and engineer, currently in exploration mode. Subscribe to follow along.
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