Why does YC keep talking about "launch early, launch often"? By default.. people don't know that you exist. It's your job to be the squeaky wheel, and let people know "HEY I EXIST", "HEY I CAN SOLVE YOUR PROBLEM" You may have seen my many posts talking about Skyvern hitting star count numbers Those didn't happen out of the blue. We kept launching, and launching, and launching. Trying to spread the word about us. Trying to learn about which use-cases we're best suited for. Trying to solve anyone's problem! Not all of the launches were effective.. but if you're curious about all the launches we've done, get ready. 1. (Pre-idea) November: I cold emailed ~100 different founders that had talked about web-automation in random online forums -> Led to our first customers + 3 pilots (and tons of lessons) 2. (First launch) January: Launched with a barely functional API and a landing page to the YC Community -> Led to our second customer and a very important disqualification criteria: we don't automate tasks on LinkedIn 3. (Second launch) February: Did our first public launch via Launch YC with a slightly more featured API + landing page -> Led to a lot of prospects we couldn't serve (healthtech companies) -> Gave us conviction that we should open source 4. (Third launch) March: Open sourced + did a ShowHN (anyone can do a ShowHN) -> This is when we first felt market pull. Our product was still just an API (no UI) with a demo that disqualified anyone who didn't want to work with startups. This went viral -- we got to 3K Github stars + we got a handful of new customers 5. (Fourth launch) June: We shipped a MVP of Skyvern Cloud (with a UI) and launched on Product hunt -> We got a handful of inbound leads but ended up #10 on the day and didn't generate much interest 6. (Fifth launch) October: Launched Skyvern Cloud on Hackernews -> went viral again and went from 6K -> 9K github stars in 4 days. Made it to #1 on Github trending daily + weekly. You'll notice that as our product got more mature, we started launching less frequently. This is because the gaps in our product became more and more clear as we talked to more users. This meant that we had market fit, but not product market fit. We still needed to iterate on the product This was obvious before the launches though.. so why launch early? Well.. more often than not, our customers ended up caring about features we thought were unimportant (ie cancelling tasks), or some features (instant live-streaming) ended up being way more important than others (debugging workflows). How would we know precisely what to build without this feedback?
There was a time I would have disagreed with you but now after having experienced launching a product, I wish I'd launched sooner. In the beginning, all you have are assumptions and ideas. The only way you can move forward is to get your idea in front of people. Use that feedback to iterate and get better.
We're taking partial credit for the steepest part of the curve in March! 😉
Love this detailed breakdown of your launch iterations! As someone building in AI, it's eye-opening to see how each launch revealed different market insights - from LinkedIn automation constraints to the unexpected importance of live-streaming features. Curious - was there a specific user feedback pattern that led to open-sourcing the project? Your journey from cold emails to 9K stars is inspiring! 🚀
This is truly a textbook example illustrating the journey of building a product. Much of the drive for perfection before launch is really about boosting self-confidence rather than truly enhancing the quality of the product. The only way to materialy improve quality is through customer feedback—both positive and negative. Thanks for sharing Suchintan Singh
The "launch early, launch often" approach indeed helps in understanding user needs and refining the product accordingly. It's essentially an ongoing iteration process to achieve product-market fit.
It's been super cool to see you and Shuchang Zheng be so transparent about the journey of building Skyvern so far! No plan survives contact with the market... looking forward to using Skyvern Cloud soon.
Launch early and often!
great content right here!
Software Engineer || Entrepreneur
1moThis is such an inspiring journey! Skyvern’s growth shows how powerful it is to keep launching, learning, and adapting. I love how you’ve turned every step—whether a win or a lesson—into progress. The message is clear: don’t wait for perfection, just get out there, show the world you exist, and let the feedback guide you. Thanks for sharing this—it’s such a great reminder to stay bold and persistent!