--- title: "JFL" description: "Six months of perfecting everything except shipping -- just put something out there." date: 2011-06-15 url: https://claylo.dev/articles/fucking-launch --- I'm about six months into my new company, Jexy. I'm a sole founder who's spent a lot of time raising money, worrying about stuff that isn't important, and spending time on "perfecting things" I learned at my last company, Mashery. At the end of the day, I'm a coder. I'm a guy who understands marketing, who understands the power of quality design, and who understands (at long last) how to delegate tasks and work/play well with others. (Pretty much.) Blah blah blah. Despite all that, I'm still a coder. Just a "ok" coder, not a virtuoso. Still, enough to get a product launched. Like a lot of geeks, I started off Jexy focusing on not making the same mistakes I'd made in the past. "This time I'm running the show, so it'll be easy to make it perfect!" I thought. ## The Harpies New tools. (Finally time to master vim! I'll get up to speed on git while I'm at it!) New processes. (100% unit test coverage! The best process around development and deployment! Continuous integration!) New environment. (I finally had to switch to Java at Mashery, so I'll just *start* with Java this time! No wait, Java blows, so Jython! Hm, can't move fast in Jython because I need too many CPython-based libraries, so ... Python!) New name, new logo. (Originally named "MessageFu", I switched to Jexy early on at considerable time & expense. Cheaper then than later, but still pricey. Three logo iterations, because I wanted it to be "just right." Only one chance at first impressions and all, right?) New bank. (Yeah, my first bank was primitive, so I actually spent time switching business banks before making any money. Crazy in hindsight.) New team. (Everyone's worried about me being a single founder, so I better round up some people to help me! I don't know anyone available who'd be a good co-founder, and I can't stomach speed-dating, so I'll get contractors!) New contacts. (I attended a conference *very* early on in the company's life as a sponsor, which was relatively inexpensive, and I thought I'd make good contacts there for my service.) What's missing? A new product. ## Just Fucking Launch I look back on all that and cringe. A few of the things I've done were the right thing to do, but most weren't. In the time that's passed, I've spent a lot of time, money, and goodwill. I'm the guy who cried "LAUNCHING SOON!" before I knew that my contractor team could hit the date. If I could do it all over, again, I'd ... Wait. I *can* do it all over again, because I'm not dead yet. And since my contractors have had to move on to other things (for a variety of reasons), I'm back to nearly square one. So here's what I'd do, and what I'd advise my fellow entrepreneurs to do: fucking launch. Talking about launching too much means you're shoplifting the launch pootie. "You've got to have the talk." [![Jerry Maguire — "Shoplifting the pootie"](https://img.youtube.com/vi/vW95YIpC6Rw/0.jpg)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vW95YIpC6Rw) ## Mistake Avoidance is a Mistake "I don't want to make the mistake of _____, *so I'll spend a month implementing a solution for it NOW." Bad idea. **The mistake that _____ had with _____** would be a nice problem for you to have. Why? Because it comes after a launch.* ## You Keep Using That Word "Launch" doesn't have to mean "an open kimono release to the entire world." It means someone has to be able to use *something*. A private alpha launch is still a launch of something, which gives you a far greater chance of building up a customer base, some buzz, some traction, than launching *nothing*. Without that, you're just talking, which means you're still shoplifting the launch pootie. ## JFDI What about all the problems from my last experience that I now know how to fix? Launch quickly, and get cracking fixing that stuff as soon as you can after launching. If you're a coder, shut up and code. Worry about *all* the rest of it later. All the preparation in the world doesn't mean anything when all your conversations are about whether or not you've launched yet. So fucking launch. What about the whole thing about needing a team? Forget that. Yes, I'll need a team (and soon), but right now I need a fucking launch. A posse of Me, My Product and My Customers beats the hell out of Me, My Team, and Jack Shit. But I want a stronger launch than my competitors have had! Forget that too. Know what they have that you don't have? A fucking launch behind them. What about the 52-thousand-whatever — all the people that will come and see that my product doesn't (yet) solve all their problems? Nevermind them. Don't even do an announcement. Just put something up so that when investors say "can I play with it?" you can say "YES, because I fucking launched." The people reading the sites that'll send you that temporary spike in traffic aren't likely to be your customers anyway, so don't spend time worrying about them. ## Move On There's a life after a launch. It's not like it'll BE DONE and then you'll launch it. It'll never be done. It will NEVER be done. So just fucking launch. Check off that box, and get started on the stuff that happens after that. What if all your product does is allow customers to sign up for an account, and nothing more? Well, that's a fucking launch. It's not one that's going to get a lot of attention, but if you put it out there and add stuff every day, you'll be get in the habit of pushing stuff and iterating. Quit worrying. No matter what you do, it won't be perfect. Just. Fucking. Launch. Like I just did. --- *Editor's note, 2026: Morgan Freeman: But he did not just launch, which is why this post was never published, until today: March 5, 2026*