🚀 Launch Fast, Iterate Faster

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This is the first-ever edition of Scalable, thanks for being an early adopter!

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This week, we're diving into the building alongside customers and continuous iteration cycles.

Launch now, gather honest user feedback, and improve.
It's about moving fast, breaking things, and refining as you go.

Here’s a snapshot of what’s on the menu today:

☝️ Scaled this past week: beehiiv 🐝

Announcing their $33M Series B round, beehiiv is the scale of the week!

These are the words of a founder who clearly launches fast and iterates quickly.

Beehiiv is the underlying infrastructure for many newsletters, like Scalable. Easily the most customer-obsessed platform out there with a massive focus on growth and experience.

• NEA is leading this Series B with Sapphire Sport and previous backer Lightspeed Venture Partners also participating (more on TechCrunch).

• If you want a piece of beehiiv, there is still an ongoing community round available on WeFunder - it is oversubscribed by $1M though (obviously, #notfinancialadvice) ✌️

🧠 Deep Dive: Launching Quickly - Why and How

“Why not build the whole thing already? Let’s not ship half-baked features to the customers until we have the entire feature set ready.”

Can’t tell you how many times I heard the logic above.

Your guess is as good as mine.

The thing is, that mindset often leads to a story of a not-very-successful business that could’ve been absolutely booming with user growth.

On the other hand, there are some valid points to uncover there:

• Why build the minimum viable version of a product?

• How can you, as a founder, not fall into this pattern?

• How can you win as a business?

To win, you need to continuously improve in time.
To improve, you need to iterate.
To iterate, you need to learn what your users really want.
In doing so, you need to test out different value propositions.
Some will succeed, and some will fail.
Don’t be afraid of failures because that’s how you learn, that’s how you win.

Two birds one stone here: Avoid the trap of building the "perfect product". An early, imperfect version provides a crucial learning curve. It allows you to test and evolve based on real customer feedback. This approach can prevent the risk of building something nobody wants. It’s about finding the balance between what’s essential for launch and what can be developed later.

1. Derisk your venture

2. Build something that people want at the same time.

Pretty sweet deal.

Regardless of what industry or business model you are in, you must begin with the problem you are solving for the customers, not the solution you have in your imagination.

Here’s what solution-first thinking and iteration cycles are inferior to problem-first iteration cycles:

Problem-first thinking ensures that the product features developed are those required by your customers, which determines satisfaction and usability.

What is the problem we solve? Car? Is there a “car” problem? Or do you aim to get people from point A to point B faster?

The end result might look similar after all, however, when you apply problem-first thinking, you will deliver more continuous and consistent value over time. That’s why not only do you need to ask yourself, but also ask your users for continuous feedback rigorously.

It’s easy to get things started in product, so you should.
It’s tough to master the feedback cycle and get value from it, so keep it tight.

🗺️ Method: Iterative Launch Framework

Feedback loops are essential for gathering valuable insights directly from users - enabling you to make more rational decisions.

Here’s how you can form your minimum viable iteration cycle:

• Set up mechanisms to gather user data and feedback efficiently.

• Use the feedback to prioritize and implement enhancements.

• Make sure your team has the right tools and visibility to build.

• Launch again, gather more feedback (back to step 1).

This allows your team to better understand customer needs, prioritize feature development, and drive continuous product improvements based on user insights.

Here is a free template that you can utilize (that I used a lot in the past) to as your first iterative launch framework.

By talking to your users and quickly updating your product based on what you hear, you keep things fresh and functional. Show your users that their voice matters and keep them coming back for more.

💡 Spotlight: BugHerd, Visual Feedback Software 

Here is a practical tool that stands out for its ability to seamlessly integrate visual feedback on web apps to help you with iteration cycles.

BugHerd is a platform for website feedback and bug tracking. They are not a sponsor or anything, I just like them.

Exceptionally helpful tool that I utilized primarily to enhance UX for web-based applications and track reported bugs and improvement points.

It's bug-tracking software that's like sticky notes on a webpage.

It’s pretty straightforward to use, and BugHerd saves you a lot of time when it consolidates feedback and simplifies documentation. You can sync your Slack, Jira, Trello, and GitHub to shorten the lead time with your dev team too.

⚾️ Catch: Impactful Pick of The Week

It’s been a major week for crypto - and no, I’m not talking about Bitcoin’s price.

🥁 Drumroll please…

Stripe just brought back crypto payments in checkout!
Here’s how it works (about 2 mins):

• Buyers can make payments in USDC, the seller receives money in fiat.

• The seller doesn't even need to know the buyer is using crypto.

• The world's biggest off-ramp is here.

Not only does Stripe remove the need to go through an exchange, but their fiat-to-crypto payment flow lets them act as a custodian and a payment facilitator at the same time.

Potentially, this might be the largest product feature launched to enable mass crypto adoption based on an everyday use case.

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