A founder’s pre-launch checklist

What to ship — and what to deliberately not ship — when you’re a few weeks from public launch.

By Aaron L.

Pre-launch is the only time you have control over what your launch is about. Use that time wisely.

Ship: a clear value proposition; one workflow that is unambiguously the best in the world at one specific thing; pricing that doesn’t require an explanation; legal pages that read like they were written by humans; a way to contact you that gets a response.

Don’t ship: features in beta because you wanted to brag about them; integrations you can’t maintain; languages you can’t support natively; an "AI" badge that promises more than the product delivers.

Less is more.