"Though never release half-baked cr@p. You have exactly one chance to make the initial splash, don't waste it."
This is absolutely not true! Release ANYTHING. A half baked product will provide you with required flexibility youll need when the market tells you what you really should be making.
> the market tells you what you really should be making.
That's what the market research phase of the project planning is for.
If you need to fine-tweak your feature set, do a closed alpha with a focus group, that's fine. But if your project plan relies on a public beta feedback for flushing out core feature set, that's just wrong. Or more specifically - it is very risky, because you are essentially implementing a wild guess product for a wild guess market and then hoping it would converge to something of a value.
I think you're taking what I'm saying out of context. I said half baked products give you the required flexibility to listen to the market.
I dont think you can over expose your self to the market. The problems come when you don't or cant move fast enough to meet its demands. It seems to me that "don't" happens a lot more than "cant" and that's usually because the founders are clinging to feature sets and ideals that aren't working. Its best to avoid that altogether and release a half baked product that you are willing to change as quickly as possible.
My point (which is based on a relevant experience) is - don't release anything to the public unless you are certain it will get traction. If you want to validate the feature set or your market positioning, do a closed release.
A lot of people tend to underestimate the importance of the initial public release. It is a single, most important natural milestone in the lifetime of a product, so it needs to be handled with an utmost care.
Staying in a stealth mode and keeping your product and its idea confidential has multiple benefits. Most importantly, it allows you to build a competitive entry barrier, which in turn gives you time after the launch to scoop up users and establish yourself as a leader on your target market segment. Disclose your idea too early and you will tip off your competitors, so by the time you have it polished and working, it already gets replicated.
The "release-early, release-often" is an open source mantra, it rarely applies to the competitive start-up environment.
Hey Ive been there too and from my experience big splash entries like Techcrunch articles and the likes don't do as much as people think.
"don't release anything to the public unless you are certain it will get traction."
This is a distribution issue which is in my opinion is a entirely different feature set than the "product". While off topic I agree the only thing you should be focusing on is getting traction. In fact I would say throw the product out of the equation and only worry about traction. But this is a different argument and admittedly I'm an extremist in this area :)
Essentially we are saying the same thing except you think discoveries should be made in private to increase your popularity at launch while I think (ONLY if you can keep up) going public is more efficient for the successful evolution of your product.
I guess it comes down to how much data you need to interpret what the market wants. Personally I need tons.Maybe you are a better interpreter than I am :)
Though never release half-baked cr@p. You have exactly one chance to make the initial splash, don't waste it.