Glossary
What is a launch week?
A launch week is a stretch of five or so days in which a company ships and announces a new feature or product every day. Developer tool companies such as Supabase popularised it. On some launch platforms, launch week also means a weekly ranking period instead of a daily one.
Two meanings
A company's launch week. A team saves up several finished features and announces one each day, with a blog post, a demo and social posts. Each day gives people a new reason to come back, and the week as a whole gets more attention than five separate releases would. Supabase made the format well known among developer tools.
A weekly launch period. Some launch platforms group launches by week instead of by day, so a product competes for a week-long leaderboard. That lowers the pressure of a single day and suits smaller communities. Uneed, for example, has weekly winners.
When a launch week makes sense
- You already have an audience that follows your updates.
- You have three to five meaningful, finished releases, not a list of small fixes.
- Your team can produce a post and demo for each day.
For a first launch with no audience, a single launch day on Product Hunt plus a spread of directories usually does more.
Example
A database company ships five things in five days: a new region, a CLI, an auth feature, a dashboard redesign and a pricing change. Each gets a post and a two-minute demo video. The week becomes the company's biggest traffic spike of the quarter, and two of the posts are picked up by developer newsletters.
FAQ
Is a launch week the same as a Product Hunt launch?
No. A launch week is a company's own series of announcements. It can include a Product Hunt launch on one of the days.
How many announcements make a launch week?
Usually five, one per weekday.
Do launch weeks work for small startups?
Only with an engaged audience and real releases. Otherwise, one focused launch day works better.