It’s two weeks since we launched freckle to the public.
I know, now, what it feels like to have a small child.
Perhaps I am a wee bit melodramatic (some might say “whiny”). Actual parents of small children: please do not assault me or storm my castle with pitchforks.
But drama queenliness or not, the parallels are there:
- post-partum depression: check!
- staying up late / getting up early to check on baby: check!
- constant interruptions (on top of sleep deficit) driving me slowly insane: check!
- obsessively watching and documenting baby’s progress: check!
- feeling the immense responsibility that comes with caring for (an)other being(s): check!
- daily calls with pediatricians (merchant account services), financial planners (my bank web site), and other trusted advisors (thanks, Erik & Alex) to keep things running smoothly and handle the occasional crisis of confidence: check!
- wondering, periodically, if it was all worth it, and then feeling totally guilty because OF COURSE IT IS: check!
And, surprisingly, this is all so much more the case after our launch. Things were downright peaceful while we were developing and running the beta.
Or, maybe this is not surprising to anyone but me. But I was surprised.
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Once you ship your product, you too will find yourself screaming bloody murder when faced with a clock! |
Launch - 1 Week
The first few days after launch left me quite down. Down in the “teen angst poetry” sense of the word, that is, not the “drunk on tequila and can’t get off the floor” sense. Unfortunately.
Simply put: the bubble of excitement had popped. It wasn’t that we had worked insane hours and burnt ourselves out, although launch day was a long day indeed.
In retrospect, I think the Post-launch Let-down is comprised chiefly of two parts:
- the passing of a major goal, the big target we’d been aiming at for 3 months
- the transition from All About Us to All About Them
We’d spent a wonderful (and sometimes exhausting/trying/frustrating) 3 months working up to the launch itself. Every time we came up with a fantastic idea, we felt great. Every time we cut out something unnecessary, and thus moved the project forward, we felt great. Every time we wrapped up a portion of the launch feature set, we felt great. Hooray for feeling great!
Once we shipped, we hit a brick wall. Sure, we had future plans, features mapped out, promotional ideas out the wazoo. But the biggest, hairiest, horizon-threatening goal was… done.
And, on top of that, it suddenly became Not All About Us. Suddenly there were all these other people we had to think about. And think about them we have, night and day, day and night!
Aaaaand there all those incoming links to read, and statistics to interpret, blog posts to write, comments to approve (and/or rebut), and, oh yeah, the little dashboard app we built that let us check on how many people were signing up.
You might say we were suffering from attention deficit dis—HEY, LET’S GO RELOAD GOOGLE ANALYTICS!
1 - 2 Weeks
Launching to the public is like getting punched in the face. Repeatedly. By one of those inflatable clown doll punching bags that wobbles but doesn’t fall down. It’s not only never-ending, it’s injurious to the pride.
After the first few days, we recovered from the initial set of knock-down clown punches, but continued to flounder in other ways.
There were tons of little bugs, of course, and we fixed them.
We responded lickety split to every exception / ticket / email / tweet / blog post / fart on the internet that mentioned us.
We even got ourselves a Campfire bot that told us when new exceptions / tickets / emails / tweets / blog posts / farts came in. (This is a mistake.)
We watched the web stats obsessively. (This is also a mistake.)
Tip: Answering support tickets at 2am may feel productive and wise and responsible, but trust me, it’s the hormones talking.
In our exhaustion, we let our actions be driven by what was in front of us. The crying baby was calling the shots. If something wasn’t screaming for attention, we didn’t give it any. Total End-of-Noseitis.
In theory, we meant to spend a significant amount of time moving forward on some super awesome features.
In reality, we pretty much spun our wheels.
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I want a free account with 50 million user logins! And a Google Android app! And Rolex integration! And a pony! Also, how do I mine for fish? |
I’m not implying that supporting our customers is a waste of time. Au contraire, I think it’s very educational in addition to providing warm-fuzzies and being, you know, the right thing to do. But if you’re not used to it, an influx of feedback—no matter how kindly written and positive—is psychically exhausting.
And, as indie software developers, we can’t afford to spend all our time reacting. If we don’t set aside time to pro-act (gah!), to work on what makes freckle great, it will slowly become not-great.
And nobody wants that, right?
2 Weeks
Now, two weeks later, we’re settling into a rhythm. Folks who submit tickets at 2am are no longer experiencing 5-minute response times (thank god), we’re sleeping through the night (mostly), and we’re no longer spending all day feeling sad that someone on the internet misunderstands us.
It’s all about setting boundaries.
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Boundaries, I say! Boundaries! Not drunken 2am joy-rides with the lane painting truck! |
Setting boundaries, in this case, has nothing to do with ignoring my mother-in-law’s emails. (Which are actually quite charming.)
It does mean that I no longer check for support tickets or feedback emails every 30 minutes. I no longer begin to salivate whenever the Campfire bot goes “Ding!” I do not obsessively monitor the number of accounts. I try not to even look at the traffic analytics.
Q: Statements of fact, or daily affirmations?
A: A lady never tells.
This helps a lot, in terms of time management and resource management (where “resource” == “my sanity”). But these are only patches, little Hello Kitty Band-aids slapped on some pretty deep cuts. These changes are themselves reactions to a problem, rather than the forging of new… thingies.
So, to kick our own asses back into gear, we’ve scheduled our first “freckle day” since the launch. We’ll meet at 9am—like it’s a job or something—and work through til evening.
On new things, not catch-up. We’ve set goals! We’ve outlined steps!
Hooray!
And Beyond!
Time will tell what the future will bring. New experiences, no doubt.
We’ll continue monitoring our energy and enthusiasm levels and trying new techniques to keep ourselves—and freckle—moving ahead.
Oh, yeah. And writing about it.
And if you’re interested in more touchy-feely posts about product-launching experience, well, you know where the Subscribe link is. (Hint: right here.)
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