The Only Thing Worse Than Being Talked About…

On the discussion forums for small software companies that I frequent, this worry is often posed by those new to the scene:

“if I release my product before it is the most awesome software product ever, I’ll make a bad first impression. And then no-one will ever bother checking out my software again.”

Fact: almost no-one will check out your software when it is first released. Getting website visitors is a slow, hard grind. It doesn’t really matter if your software is basic, lacking the killer grogulate feature, looks ugly, is slow, and has bad copy on the website. You can gradually improve that stuff over time.

Evidence: a chart of traffic to the Poker Copilot website from the day I released. Traffic in July 2009 was 30 times greater than traffic in July 2008 (the first full month after release).

Version 1.0, released on June 30th, didn’t do much. It only worked with Full Tilt cash games. It’s main purpose was to tell me whether I was playing tight enough and aggressive enough. But of the few people who did find it and try it, one or two gave me feedback. Like, “please support tournaments” and “please support Poker Stars”.

That feedback was the start of a never-ending torrent. And torrent of feedback is what shaped – and continues to shape – Poker Copilot.