Launch is a checklist, not a mood

"Launch" sounds like a party. It's an experiment: a defined audience, a defined ask, and a number you committed to before the day. Launch day is the easy part — the preparation and the measurement are the actual work.

Launch day is the easy part

The checklist writes itself when the earlier stages were honest: who you're launching to (from RESEARCH), what the first ten users should do (from BUILD), what result would justify continuing (from VALIDATE). If the launch plan feels vague, the gap isn't marketing — it's an earlier stage that got skipped. The gate knows; that's why it made you record the evidence first.

The first 10 users

Not 10,000 — 10. Ten real users who use the thing twice, whose jobs, complaints, and workarounds you actually know. Ten beats a thousand drive-by signups because you can watch ten people use a product, interview ten people about a product, and fix for ten people this week. Distribution comes after the product survives contact with ten humans.

Where do they come from? The channel you named back in RESEARCH. If you can't name where the first ten come from, that wasn't research — repeat it.

Measure the launch like an experiment

Before launch day, write the number down: visits, signups, activated users, and what "worked" means in 30 days. A launch without a pre-committed metric becomes a story you can spin — which is the same as a lesson you can't learn.

Where the OS enforces this

• The status strip keeps LAUNCH visible — the product is now in front of users, and the next gate is revenue, not vibes.
• A Live Data Feed connected at launch means usage and revenue flow in on their own — launch metrics you don't hand-maintain.
• Experiments stay the unit of progress: "launch" is just the biggest one, with the target written down first.

The Overview during LAUNCH — stage, gate, and real numbers in one glance.

Next: The only metrics that matter at $0.