Product Launch Checklist for Founders

Most product launch checklists are written for a marketing department. Columns for owner and department, a section for sales enablement, a rollout plan for twelve regions.

This one is for a founder launching software, alone or with a couple of people, on Product Hunt, Hacker News, Reddit or X. It runs from six weeks out to the week after, with launch day hour by hour, and ends with the six numbers worth watching while it happens.

We launch our own products this way, and we keep the checklist on Context Board, which we make. Its Launch week template puts the countdown, a signup goal and the checklist on one screen. Everything below works on paper too.

6 to 8 weeks before: the groundwork

The work that decides a launch happens here, long before anyone sees it.

• Write the one-sentence pitch: who it’s for and what it changes for them. Say it out loud to 20 people who fit, and use the words they use back.
• Build the landing page: one call to action. If the product isn’t live yet, collect emails.
• Set up pricing and checkout: then buy it yourself with a real card, from the landing page to the receipt email.
• Install analytics on the real domain: not staging. Decide what counts as a signup, an activated user and a paying customer before day one.
• Pick your main channel: Product Hunt, Show HN, a subreddit or X. Read each one’s rules now, not the night before.
• Make your Product Hunt accounts: for you and every co-maker. Product Hunt wants co-makers to have accounts before launch, and company accounts aren’t allowed.
• Start building in public: a few posts about what you’re making give people a reason to care on the day.

2 weeks before: the assets

Now make everything people will see, and everything that will break if nobody checks.

For the launch page, per Product Hunt’s prep guide:

• Tagline under 60 characters, and a description up to 500.
• A square thumbnail, about 240 by 240, under 3 MB.
• At least two gallery images, ideally 1270 by 760.
• A short demo video. It does more than any image.
• A direct product link. Product Hunt rejects shortened links and UTM tracking links.
• Your first comment, drafted. Product Hunt says 70% of products that won Product of the Day, Week or Month had a first comment from the maker. Keep it humble and say who it’s for.

For your site:

• A share image for the landing page. Paste the link into X and Slack and check the preview.
• A support inbox with an auto-reply, and a one-page FAQ.
• Error tracking on, and a status page or a pinned post for when something breaks.
• Terms and privacy pages live.
• A changelog page, so you can show what you ship after launch.

For the day:

• Line up people to try it and comment honestly. Ask for feedback, never votes.
• Schedule the Product Hunt launch. You can book it up to a month ahead.

Launch week: freeze and test

• Freeze features: fix only what blocks the launch. A new feature on Tuesday is a new bug on Thursday.
• Retest on production: sign up, onboard, pay and get the receipt, as a stranger would.
• Make it easy to try: Hacker News asks for something people can try, “ideally without signups or emails”. A demo account or a no-signup preview helps everywhere.
• Write each post for its place: the Show HN text (what it is, how it works, why you built it), a post for each subreddit that allows it, and an X thread with the demo.
• Clear your calendar for launch day and the day after. You’ll spend both answering people.
• Put the launch on one screen: the countdown, your signup goal, the checklist and the traffic.

Here’s how ours looks. The Launch week template on Context Board ships with a countdown, a subscribers goal ring, visitors today, the launch checklist, a subscribers chart, where people came from, the Show HN list and launch notes. It ships empty, and fills from the sources you connect.

The template’s six checklist items are the top layer of this guide. Add your own, and ask your agent to add the rest: “Add the two-weeks-out items from this list to my launch checklist.”

Launch day, hour by hour

Times are Pacific, for a launch led by Product Hunt. Shift them to your own zone and channel.

12:01 am PT: go live. Product Hunt says 12:01 am Pacific is the best time for makers planning ahead, because it gives you the full 24 hours on the homepage. Post your first comment straight away. Open your own launch page, click through to the product and run the checkout once more.

First two hours: reply to everyone. Every comment gets a real answer. Share the link with your list and your communities as “we launched, I’d love your feedback”. Product Hunt’s only real rule is that you can’t ask people directly to upvote.

US morning: Show HN. Post it when you can sit and answer for a few hours. Per the Show HN guidelines, start the title with “Show HN”, make it something people can try, and be there to talk about it. Asking friends to upvote or comment is not ok. Post your X thread around the same time.

Midday: watch where people come from. Check traffic sources and fix whatever trips visitors up. A confusing pricing line or a broken mobile menu costs more today than any other day.

Afternoon: the communities. Post in the subreddits whose rules allow it, one at a time, written for each. Don’t paste one link everywhere.

Evening: count and thank. Note the numbers, reply to the last comments, and thank people in public. Claim your Product Hunt product page if you haven’t.

The six numbers to watch on launch day

You’ll want to refresh everything at once. Pick six numbers and put them on one screen instead.

A few notes from running this on a board. Plausible’s widgets show complete days, so on launch day itself watch visitors in Google Analytics or your own signups stream. The board’s Hacker News source follows the Show HN list, so you can see your post move without refreshing the page. And keep the board full screen on a second monitor. Context Board shows numbers live while it’s open, and doesn’t send alerts.

If you want to plan the numbers before the day, our KPI dashboard examples list the formula for each and where it comes from.

The week after: the second launch

The launch isn’t the result. What you do in the next seven days decides whether it turns into customers.

• Email everyone who signed up: a personal reply from the founder beats any onboarding sequence.
• Sort the feedback: fix now, fix later, no. Write down every feature request with who asked.
• Ship the top fix, visibly: put it in the changelog and reply to the person who asked.
• Turn good comments into testimonials: ask first.
• Write a “what we learned” post: real numbers, what worked and what didn’t. It’s a second, smaller launch.
• Review sources against paid conversion: the channel with the most visitors is often not the one with the most customers. Put your next week there.

Common launch mistakes

1. Launching an idea: Show HN rules out landing pages and sign-up pages. Most places reward something people can try.
2. Asking for upvotes: it breaks both Product Hunt’s and Hacker News’s rules, and it shows.
3. Testing on staging: the checkout that worked on localhost fails on the real domain at 12:05 am.
4. Disappearing after the post: the comments are the launch. Plan to be there all day.
5. Six tabs on refresh: you miss the comment that mattered while you were reloading analytics. One screen, six numbers.

Put the checklist on a board

You can run all of this from a doc. We run it on Context Board because the checklist, the countdown and the numbers sit together.

1. Start a board at board.contextbolt.com and pick Launch week.
2. Set the countdown to your launch time and the goal to your signup target.
3. Connect your sources in Connect: Plausible or Google Analytics for visitors, beehiiv or Buttondown for subscribers, Stripe or Lemon Squeezy for the first orders.
4. Ask your agent to add the rest of this checklist to the board’s checklist. Claude, ChatGPT, Claude Code, Codex and Cursor all connect over MCP.
5. On the day, open it full screen and get back to answering comments.

If you’d rather plan each day of launch week as a timeline, the Day planner board does that, and our Sunsama alternatives guide shows how it compares. Comparing dashboard tools first? The small business dashboard software roundup prices nine of them.

Try Context Board free for 3 days, then $6 a month at the launch price, and start your launch board.