How long should a startup launch take?

Plan four weeks of public work, not one day. The product can be “early.” The sequence is what makes the early product learn.

What if I have no audience?

Start with BetaList and a fair board like Uneed. Product Hunt without an Upcoming list is how you finish below the fold.

Playbook · 11 min · Updated 2026-09-02

A four-week launch sequence that does not depend on one trophy

Week by week: waitlist, warm-up boards, Product Hunt, Show HN, and the listings that keep sending traffic after launch week.

Week 0: assets, not announcements

Landing page with one CTA. A demo that plays without a login wall if you can. Unique UTMs per channel. A spreadsheet with dates. Submit BetaList now because of the queue. Add AlternativeTo and SaaSHub because they cost almost no attention. Claim the G2 profile even if you have zero reviews yet.

Week 1: waitlist and copy QA

If BetaList is still queued, you can still talk to people. Post a milestone on Indie Hackers. Answer questions in a subreddit you already belong to — without spamming a link. Every confused reply is a rewrite of the one-liner.

Week 2: warm-up launch

Uneed, Fazier, Peerlist, or IndieHunt. SideHunt if it still looks like a side project. Tell your tiny list. Stay in the comments. Do not ask for upvotes. The goal is not a screenshot. The goal is five sentences you now know do not work, and twenty people who will show up next week if you earned it.

Week 3: main event, one channel per day

Tuesday or Wednesday: Product Hunt at 12:01am Pacific if you are ready, with email and an X thread that points at the PH page. Do not also drop Show HN the same morning. Thursday or the following week: Show HN or a LinkedIn operator post, depending on the buyer.

Protect your attention. A silent maker on Product Hunt loses to a worse product with a present one.

Week 4: keep the assets

Update directories. Ask three happy users for G2 reviews if policy allows. Write a short recap with numbers — that recap is often the page that ranks. Put the same facts on your own site so AI systems have a canonical source.

If you use the Hunt network

Aura++ (daily) or IndieHunt (weekly) can be the week-2 warm-up. MakerHunt, SideHunt, and EarlyHunt are weekly rooms with different niches — pick the one that matches. Uno Directory is the lasting catalog. Full breakdown: the Hunt network guide.