A week ago this evening, I organized another meeting of the Boston Web Innovators Group, an informal gathering of local folks interested in internet and mobile innovation. (Our turnout has continued to swell with the help of this recent event’s presenters Swaptree, MyBlogLog, and Pawspot, as well as demos from tourb.us, LoudCity, Glance, and Bloggerkit. See BostonWTF, TechJot, and Rosswriting for summaries and coverage.)
And in talking with a many of the entrepreneurs there that evening, a lot of them had just launched their site or service, or were just about to do so. It was great to hear the numerous stories of ideas and companies at this stage. I personally have been a part of the operational team on a number of product launches at both startups and large corporations, but it seems to me that the most exciting one is that very first launch of a startup. There is a small team of people who have toiled endlessly, all working together, solely devoting all of their professional (and personal) resources towards this one goal. With it comes the promise of favorable user/customer reaction, as well as the impending initial market feedback to what once was an idea that now translated into reality. Future releases will be revisions and refinements of the early product, or adjunct related extensions of the offering. But the initial launch, the first one a newly-formed team has crafted, sets the tone and direction – and the fate – of the new company. All the reasons why the initial launch is so crucial to a startup are the very same ones which make it so exciting.