Start selling before the product is finished

The biggest mistake I see has nothing to do with design. Founders wait until the product is finished before they start selling it.

The limbo of a finished product

[Invented] A while back I was on a call with a founder who had been building for most of a year. Smart person, good product, a demo that made me want to use it. I asked who was on the waitlist. There wasn't one. I asked who knew it existed. A few friends, a couple of investors. They said they were waiting until it was ready. I asked what ready meant. There was a pause, and then a list that kept getting longer as they talked.

I understand it. Showing something half-built feels exposed. They want to protect the features, keep the good stuff under wraps until it's ready. So the months go by and nothing is out in the world. Nobody has heard of them.

Then the day comes, the product is done, they launch, and it's quiet. Crickets. They've built something finished and they have nobody to give it to. That's the limbo I keep seeing: a complete product and no users.

What launch day feels like

[Invented] Launch day is the part nobody warns you about. You imagine the first signups and the messages from people who get it. Instead you refresh the dashboard. You post on LinkedIn and get nine likes, six from people you know. You tell yourself it's early. By the afternoon you've stopped saying that out loud. The product is exactly as good as it was yesterday. The only difference is that now you're waiting for strangers to care, and strangers don't know you exist.

The founder who started early

[Invented] Compare that with a founder who started talking a year earlier. Same product, same launch day. The difference is a list. A few hundred people who said yes, tell me when it's ready. Some of them have been following along for months. They've watched the product take shape. They know the founder by name. When the doors open, the first signups arrive before lunch. Not because the product is better. Because somebody was waiting.

[Invented] I've seen both versions. In one case the founder spent a year in a room with the product. In the other they spent that year with their future customers. You can guess which launch felt like a celebration and which felt like an audit.

The fear of being copied

When I raise it, the answer is usually the same. A competitor will copy it, build it faster, win. I get the fear. I tell them the opposite is true. You're already ahead, because you're already building. And if features are the only thing protecting you, that's a thin wall anyway. You don't have to show everything, either. The marketing can be vague. You can tease.

Familiarity beats speed

[Invented] I'll add something that rarely comes up in these conversations. Copying is harder than it looks. A competitor can copy a feature list in a weekend. They can't copy the three hundred people who already trust you, or the year you've spent talking about this problem in public. Speed matters less than people think. Familiarity matters more.

[Invented] Most competitors aren't watching you that closely, either. They're busy building their own thing, and probably hiding it too. The person most worried about your launch is you.

The fear underneath

[Invented] The fear underneath the fear is usually simpler. They're afraid of looking foolish. What if the page is wrong, the message is off, the first people who see it aren't impressed? Early audiences are forgiving. They know it's early. They'd rather meet you rough than not meet you at all. The ones who aren't forgiving were never going to be your customers anyway.

What to put out there

So what do you put out there? Start with who it's for. That matters more than anything else. Someone should land on your page and feel it was made for people like them, even if they couldn't yet tell you what it does. That feeling is familiarity, and it comes first.

[Invented] Think about the last product you signed up for before you really understood it. You probably didn't read a feature list. You saw a line that sounded like your own problem, and something in you said that's me. Specific beats clever here. "For solo founders who hate invoicing" will do more than "a modern financial platform for ambitious teams". The first one finds its people. The second one finds nobody.

Talk in benefits

Next, the bigger mission. Not a feature list, but what those features make possible. Think big. Talk in benefits: "faster invoicing", not "AI-enabled invoicing".

[Invented] Features are what you have. Benefits are what the person gets. Nobody wakes up wanting an AI-enabled anything. They wake up wanting to stop chasing late payments, or to stop dreading the end of the month. Say that and they listen. Describe the engine and they nod politely and scroll on. The early landing pages that work all sound like someone describing a better Tuesday.

[Invented] Here's a quick test. Read your homepage line to someone outside your industry. If they ask "meaning what?", rewrite it. If they say "oh, that's useful", you're close. It takes five minutes and it's more honest than any focus group.

Tell a story

Somewhere in there, tell a story. Why you're building it, what bugged you enough to start. A feature list has never made anyone care. A story can.

[Invented] The story doesn't need to be dramatic. It needs to be true. Maybe you spent three years in a job doing this by hand, and you finally snapped. Maybe a friend lost a client over a mistake your product would have caught. Whatever it is, say it plainly, in your own voice, the way you'd tell it over dinner. People can tell when a story has been through a committee. They can also tell when it hasn't.

[Invented] Most founders skip the story because it feels indulgent. They think it's about them, when it's really about the reader. The story is a doorway. It lets someone see themselves in your problem before they see themselves in your product.

Start publishing

Then the practical part, the bit that pays you back. Start publishing. Set up a newsletter or a waitlist and collect emails from day one. It will save you weeks later. Get on LinkedIn, say what you think about your space, jump into the conversations that matter.

Build the habit

[Invented] You don't need a content calendar or a strategy deck. You need a habit. One post a week about something you actually think. A short note to the list every couple of weeks about what you built and what you got wrong. Early on, almost nobody will read it, and that's fine. You're writing for the first fifty people, and they'll remember you were there before everyone else.

[Invented] On LinkedIn, be a person rather than a brand. Say what you noticed this week. Say what surprised you. Reply to other people's posts the way you'd reply to a friend's message. Don't chase reach. Aim to be recognizable when someone finally needs what you're building.

Why the waitlist matters

[Invented] The waitlist deserves its own mention. It's the cheapest asset you'll ever build. Every email on it is someone who raised their hand. When you launch, you don't start from zero. You start with a room that's already half full. When you want to test a price, or a name, or a feature, you have people to ask. And when something goes wrong, which it will, you have people who'll forgive you, because they were there from the start.

[Invented] It compounds, too. The people on your list tell their friends. The post you wrote in March gets found in September. The founder who started early isn't only ahead on launch day. They're ahead on every day after it, because they've already learned how to talk to their market, and that's a skill nobody can copy.

[Invented] And if the product changes along the way, good. It will. The people on your list will tell you what they actually want, usually in a reply to an email you almost didn't send. Some of the best direction I've seen came from a single throwaway comment from someone who'd been following along for a few months. You can't buy that kind of input once you've launched.

[Invented] I know the discomfort. Putting something out before it's perfect feels like showing up to a party half dressed. But nobody remembers the half-dressed version. They remember that you kept showing up, and that when the product finally arrived, it felt like something they'd been part of.

What if nobody signs up?

[Invented] I get a version of the same question every time: what if nobody signs up? Then you've learned something for the price of a landing page, and you've learned it before spending another six months building the wrong thing. Cheapest research you'll ever do.

When waiting works

[Invented] There's a version of this where you still wait, and it works out. I won't pretend it never does. Some products are so good they sell themselves the day they appear. But that's a lottery ticket, and most of us aren't holding it. The founders I'd bet on are the ones who stack the odds before launch, not the ones who hope for a lucky break.

We don't run a full strategy session on this with every client. We do always bring it up, and we always push for the waitlist early.

Start small, this week

[Invented] If you take one thing from this, make it small. Pick a date this week. Put up a page with a single sentence about who it's for and a box to leave an email. Don't wait for the logo or the product video. The product will be ready when it's ready. The people should be waiting by then.