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Good luck…

WooHoo your app is done and you’re ready for the world to check out your site.
So you email TechCrunch. “They’ll review my app and help get the word out” -you tell yourself.
You eagerly wait for a reply…

• No response…
• “Hmmm they must be busy, they’ll get back to me”
• A couple of more days pass by
• Still no response
• “Maybe they didn’t get my email. Ill try again”
• Still no response

Then it sinks in. You’re not getting reviewed by TechCrunch, they’re not even going to reply back to you.

Sure they probably get more email than they can handle, this is speculation on my part, but Im guessing TechCrunch doesn’t reply back for the same reason VC’s don’t tell you “no” when you’re asking for funding. Guy Kawasaki explains:

This is because there’s no upside to communicating a negative decision. Entrepreneurs will simply hate us sooner–instead the game is to string along entrepreneurs in case something miraculous happens to make them look better.

So the odds are your site wont get reviewed. Heck you wont even get an email back.
Don’t take my word for it. Try it yourself right now, email TechCrunch and introduce yourself and your site. Most likely you wont get an email back. This wont change when you’re ready to launch, and be reviewed.

If you think that TechCrunch will be a major part of your marketing.

Think again.

REVERSAL
IF your app does get picked up & you do have a worthy application, be prepared for a wild ride:

• You’ll get instant traffic
• Your site will get picked up by a bunch of TechCrunch follower blogs
• You’ll meet some new contacts. TechCrunch has a deep following. Expect a few emails from people genuinely interested in your site

Only fools rush in

I came across some excellent questions you should ask yourself if you’re starting a new company. These questions will help you expose holes in your startup plan, and could keep you from “creating a better search engine”.

There are 25 total questions. Here are the most important ones:

1. What unique service or product does your company provide to your target market?
2. What exit strategy is planned – acquisition? IPO? What year? If an acquisition, to what kinds of companies? Whats the expected ROI to investors?
3. What capital is needed now and later and for what purpose?
4. Who is the target market and its size? What penetration is projected by what year?
5. What revenue models and sources will create what revenue by Year 3 and Year 5?
6. What are your margins, costs of goods, profitability model.
7. How will you market your product, how much will it cost?
8. How long will it take to get your product on the market
9. Who are your competitors and what are your advantages over them?

Related articles:

• the key to building a web app that succeeds and makes you money →

Thinking about building a web app? Not sure what web application you should build? You probably have a few ideas kicking around, maybe you’re thinking of building a project management application, maybe a video sharing site, or a social networking site. Heres a tip to help you choose:

Build a web application that helps its users make money.

Why?

Because people can justify paying for a service if it helps them conduct their business and make money.

Thats ONE of the reasons for the success of 37signals products. Their core products, Basecamp, Highrise and Campfire all help people conduct business and make money.

If you help people make money you can also charge a higher cost for your web app. Its not reasonable to spend $49 a month sharing your videos, you wont find many people willing to shell out that kind of money on a recreational activity. But it is reasonable to spend $49 a month running your business. If you build a web app that makes people money they will pay more, a lot more, to use it.

Also if you’re helping people make money, there’s another side benefit. When you’re in charge of running a business you usually want the best equipment. For example, if you can afford it you would upgrade your typical office chair to an Aeron. Its somewhat similar when it comes to web apps. Entrepreneurs won’t settle for a standard plan when they can upgrade to a premium plan. Choosing a premium plan over lesser plans intrinsically shows you and your employees that you’re serious about business.

Its like choosing Windows professional edition over Windows Home edition. A lot of business’s could get away with using Home edition but they’ll purchase professional edition anyway. Business owners don’t want their employees seeing HOME edition when they boot up, they want their employees to see their running professional. There’s also an element of human nature, rather than doing more work its easier to show your dedication by purchasing better equipment.

Expect the same with your paid plans. If your application helps people conduct business your users will be more receptive to upgrade their plans to a higher cost premium plan. If you have an app that people are using recreationally it will be much harder for you to convert them to higher paying plans.

So if you want to build a web application that makes you money, then build a web application to help make others money.

We plan to release early and release often”, says the project manager. Many times, I don’t think this is the way to go. I agree with releasing often, you definitely need to iterate and improve your product quickly. But reconsider releasing early.

Here’s why:
For web applications the barriers to entry are so low. Anyone can spit out a web application in little time and on a minimal budget. That’s exactly what’s going on, we’re seeing an abundance of half baked web applications. There’s a group of entrepreneurs who are quickly putting out apps hoping “that it sticks”, and of course if it doesn’t its no big deal, since the time and cost associated with launching the app has been minimal.

Ok, but your app is different, you don’t have a trivial web application. You’ve put a lot of time, effort and money into this. Your early launch should be successful right?

Well, how do you think a casual viewer will feel about your app if you release before some of your distinctive features are in place and if you release too early that you haven’t had time to create a visually attractive application? Right your app will be lumped together with the “lets see if it sticks” type of apps.

It’s a much better strategy to take your time on the initial release and produce a stronger initial product.

So when should you release early?
If you app is in a position to capture first mover advantage or if its an open source project then it should be one of your top priorities.

1. Get the word out early On dec.21 2005, 37signals annouce their new project on their blog. Originally highrise was called sunrise.
2. Keep them interested So 37signals initially announced highrise on December 2005 and it launched in March 2007, thats alot of in between time. To keep highrise on peoples mind they release little teaser posts on their blog every now and then. These type of posts can quickly turnoff readers, to combat this 37signals combine quality informative posts while at the same time relating it to highrise. Heres an example, 37signals talk about their design decisions, they mention highrise and thow in a screenshot. Now they offer their readers solid information while at the same time they are advertising their upcoming product.
3. Show them the money Ok now its about 2-3 weeks before launch. Its time to release some hard details about highrise on their blog. They dont release 1 long post, instead they chunk their posts and release 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 previews.
4. Kick in the permission marketing Ok people are interested, now its time to kick in the permission marketing. 37signals entice their readers to sign up for the highrise mailing list by offering ‘golden tickets’ to random people who sign up. ‘Golden ticket’ holders get access to highrise a few days before it launches. What a brilliant way to get people on the mailing list, offer them a chance to use it before anyone else does.
5. Make the announcement Highrise launches, they send out an email to everyone on their mailing list and ofcourse they post it on their blog.
6. Hold back a bit and generate goodwill A couple of days after the launch they generate goodwill by upping quotas. They also opened up some features (’cases’) that were previously only available on the higher paying plans. This is a pretty good strategy. Hold back (speculation) on a important feature at launch, let a few people complain and then open them up under the mantra ‘we’re listening to feedback’. The bottom line is it generates goodwill, and the users are happy.
7. Make another announcement Lastly, They email everyone on their mailing list again to announce the upped quota.

Very few companies can pull off such a successful launch. It helps to know how people that are on top of their game orchestrate a successful launch.