Launch Day

John Scalo
01 May 2014

It was quite a day. It was the big launch of what Charlie and I changed careers for and what we’ve worked on non-stop for the last six months. The day the question is answered: will anyone care?

And…it went well! As I write this, we’ve had almost 600 new users for the day which is easily on the high end of what we hoped. People seem to care.

What struck me most about the day was that this is fun. Not just that it’s fun to launch a new product (it is), but that the product itself is fun. It’s fun to talk with like-minded people about numbers from different walks of life. It’s fun to see people create, share, and track numbers that are important to them. In a way, each number comes with its own little chat room and it’s fun to watch those micro-communities grow.

It also occurs to me that this is the first product launch I’ve had outside of Apple in many years (remember Key Xing, Mac Minder, or Simon Extreme anyone?). The two experiences couldn’t be more different. At Apple when a product I worked on went live (iOS 7 and OS X Mavericks, most recently), I’d obsessively monitor Twitter/blogs/discussion forums for issues related to my work. But Apple didn’t allow me to answer questions with my own name or as a representative of Apple, so I had to use an anonymous account on the Apple discussion forums if I wanted to help someone out of a jam.

Obviously, that will no longer be a problem :-) I’ve always enjoyed helping people (hell, I did phone tech support for three years so I must) and to work directly with others on a product that I created is incredibly fulfilling.

I can’t wait for tomorrow.