My launch got 63 upvotes and no badge. Here's what I'd do differently.
Not a pity post I've recovered and I'm launching again in six weeks. But I want to write down the post-mortem while it's still fresh, because I made three mistakes that I now see everywhere in other people's launches.
Mistake one: I treated the launch as the marketing, not a moment in an existing marketing motion. I had no list, no audience, no warm network on PH. 63 upvotes was basically my friends plus luck.
Mistake two: my tagline described the category ("AI-powered project management") instead of a result. Nobody clicks a category.
Mistake three: I launched on a Tuesday because "Tuesday sounds good." I had no idea what else was launching that day. Two well-known companies launched the same day and I was invisible.
What I'd do differently: build the audience for 6–8 weeks first, test three taglines with strangers before committing, and check the upcoming launches calendar before picking a date.
Replies
Good post mortem. On mistake two, one nuance from my app store data: the category words are often what people search for, the result words are what makes the right people stay. For my song app, "ai song generator" is by far the most searched phrase, while result phrases like "birthday song" are barely searched. But the category traffic brought mostly young users making a song for themselves, and every early payer was 35 or older and came for an occasion. So I would split the job: let the category words help people find you, and make the tagline itself the result, because the tagline decides who clicks and stays. Good luck in six weeks!