Guide · 3 min read ·
A launch plan for a small SaaS team, from three weeks out to day one
Launches fail in boring ways. The signup form breaks, nobody set up the welcome email, the link preview is blank, or the founders disappear after the first day. A checklist will not make your product good, but it stops you from losing a launch to something avoidable. This guide explains the reasoning behind each stage of the checklist above, so you can adapt it to your own product.
Start earlier than feels necessary
Three weeks ahead sounds early, but the early tasks take a long time to show results. Accounts on launch platforms may need review. Descriptions and screenshots take longer than expected. Setting up analytics now means you will know where your first customers actually come from. The aim of the first stage is to remove every task that could cause a scramble later.
The most useful early job is the plainest: write one sentence that says what your product does and who it is for. Everything else in the launch, from your page to your posts, grows from that sentence. If you struggle to write it, the listing copy generator can help you find the words.
The week before: make sure it works
This stage is about testing like a customer. Sign up as a new user, pay with a real card, use the product, and cancel. Do it on a phone as well as a laptop. Check that the welcome, verification and password reset emails actually arrive and do not land in spam. Most launch day disasters would have been found by someone doing this once.
Check your landing page too. Ask someone who has never seen it to look for five seconds, then tell you what the product does. If they cannot, fix the page before you send anyone to it. The launch page grader catches the technical gaps, and the social preview checker shows how your link will look when shared.
Choose a few channels, not all of them
It is tempting to post everywhere on launch day. A better plan is to pick the few places where your customers genuinely spend time and do those well. For many products that is a launch platform, a handful of startup directories and one or two communities. Read each community's rules about self promotion before you post, and take part in a genuine way, since a link dropped into a forum with no context usually gets removed.
If you plan to use a launch platform, schedule it for a weekday morning and tell your existing audience the day before. A directory listing, by contrast, has no deadline, so you can claim a tile on CircleSaaS at any point and it keeps working.
On launch day
The best launch day habits are simple.
- Reply to every comment and message, quickly and personally.
- Watch your error logs and signup flow so you can fix problems as they appear.
- Share what is happening, such as numbers and lessons, since people like a story in progress.
- Thank the people who help, in public.
After launch is where the value is
Most of the benefit of a launch arrives in the weeks after it. Email everyone who signed up and ask what nearly stopped them, because their answers are a free roadmap. Check that every directory link points where it should and passes value, using the link checker. Add the CircleSaaS badge to your site to turn your link into a dofollow one.
Begin measuring from the first month. Use the churn calculator to see whether customers stay, and the LTV to CAC calculator to see whether the channels you used pay for themselves.
Mistakes to avoid
A few patterns repeat in launches that disappoint.
- Launching with a broken signup or payment path.
- Treating launch as a one day event with no follow up.
- Sending traffic to a page that does not say what the product does.
- Spreading effort across too many channels to do any well.
- Ignoring feedback because the numbers looked small.
How to use the checklist
Work through the list in order and tick items as you go. Your progress is saved in your browser, so you can come back to it. Add or skip tasks to suit your product, since a developer tool and a consumer app need different things. Use Copy what is left to move the unfinished items into your own notes or task manager.