The 30-day launch
Launch day is day one, not the finish line. A cadence for the month that actually decides the outcome.
4 MIN READ
The launch you’re picturing — one big day, a spike, then the product “takes off” — happens to almost nobody. What actually works is duller and far more reliable: the same clear message, re-cut and re-shipped, every few days for a month. Here’s the cadence.
Week one — announce
Ship the announcement everywhere it has a native format: the launch tweet (your strongest angle, one link, no hashtags), Product Hunt with a founder comment that tells the origin story, Show HN written in honest technical language, and your README rewritten as a pitch — for a dev tool, the README is the landing page most people actually read.
Don’t spread these across the week to “stay visible.” Stack them in 48 hours. Momentum on one platform is evidence on the next.
Week two — teach
The announcement told people what it is. Now show how it works: a 60-second demo, a thread on the hardest engineering problem you solved, a before/after of the workflow it replaces. Teaching content outperforms announcing content for everyone who isn’t ready to buy yet — which is almost everyone.
Week three — prove
Surface evidence: the first unsolicited compliment (screenshot it), usage numbers if they’re interesting, a user’s problem solved in public. If you have none of these yet, manufacture the conditions — onboard five users by hand and write about what broke. Honesty about week-three reality is itself a proof angle.
Week four — repeat
Look at the month’s numbers. One angle won. Re-cut it: the winning tweet becomes a thread, the thread becomes the new landing page headline, the headline becomes next month’s opener. You’re not starting over — you’re compounding what the audience already voted for.
Then keep the loop running. Generate a fresh batch of tweets from your angle each week, post the best, track what lands. Distribution isn’t a launch-day event. It’s a habit with a cadence — and the cadence is the strategy.