How much time do you spend on a product launch, and what items take the longest to prepare?
Today I received a question about proper launch preparation:
“Nika, how long should this take us?”
And I didn’t have a clear answer.
Because I remember people who built a landing page five days before launch and made it into the top five.
And I also know people who prepare strategically and build their community at least six months in advance.
When I was preparing the relaunch of the iOS version of Minimalist Phone, I spent around 53 hours on everything related to Product Hunt engagement on the launch day (I tracked it). Out of that, about 7–10 hours were on launch day itself. So roughly 43–45 hours of preparation. Those hours were spread over about 1.5 months.
And that’s with the fact that I’ve been building the community for three years. The product already has some launch history on the platform.
The biggest time investment was for us personally (in this exact order):
Creating visuals (for Product Hunt, social media, and newsletter campaigns)
Video production – but we already had a video that we edited; otherwise, this one would be the most time-consuming item
Engagement (DMs)
Copywriting
Do you keep internal records of how much time you’ve invested in a single launch?
I would be curious to compare.
Replies
AI Meal Planner
For me, it usually takes around 15–20 minutes to put together the core visuals.
There are now so many AI tools that drastically reduce production time. For example, for mockups I use https://shots.so — I just take clean screenshots and drop them into ready-made layouts. That alone removes hours from the design process.
The same applies to copy. AI helps draft, refine, and restructure content quickly, so most of the time goes into thinking and positioning rather than execution.
Of course, community building and engagement still take real effort — that part can’t be automated. But purely in terms of asset creation, it’s much faster today than even a year ago.
I don’t track hours formally, but compared to traditional launch prep, AI has probably cut our production time by at least 50–70%.
minimalist phone: creating folders
@nizhnichenko and what was the result of that launch (or are you about to launch)?
AI Meal Planner
@busmark_w_nika I’ve noticed that results on PH are very activity-dependent.
When I am actively engaging like commenting, replying fast, participating in discussions and the launch performs significantly better.
When activity drops, visibility drops as well.
So from my experience, it’s less about the assets alone and more about consistent engagement on the platform.
minimalist phone: creating folders
@nizhnichenko It is a semi-social media, so there must be a truth somewhere in the lines you have written :)