Cnverg’s latest launch on Product Hunt wasn’t perfect but that’s not the point

There’s no such thing as the perfect time to launch. John Kirk knows this.
Kirk’s company, Cnverg, which makes “a real-time whiteboard” for project management, launched new integrations with Trello on Product Hunt earlier this week and ran into some bugs. There was a glitch that didn’t let users sign up and the Cnverg app wasn’t completely updated until after it got on Product Hunt. Cnverg made it to No. 8 on the buzzy product platform, which wasn’t exactly what Kirk hoped for. (Kirk and his team left Wilmington for Austin last year, but we’re claiming them still. Once a Delaware startup, always a Delaware startup.)
And yet, Cnverg saw its highest increase in paid conversions ever. Kirk and his team also got lots of valuable feedback. They don’t regret launching this week, despite the bugs.
“We had picked a date to launch, come hell or high-water, and we stuck to it,” Kirk wrote in an email, “even if everything wasn’t lined up perfectly.”
He continued:

We stuck with an equally important goal in the life of a startup, which was getting the product shipped on a deadline that we set. Things will happen outside of your control, unplanned obstacles and bugs will slow you down, and you might not feel like everything is ready. But if you want to get a product out into the world, and validate the assumptions that you’re trying to prove, at some point you have to just say ‘Fuck it, ship it’ and have confidence in your product and that you will validate your assumptions.
Having validated most of our assumptions the past six months, we’re now looking at increasing growth – but had we been wrong, we would be learning how to revisit those assumptions. But you cannot get to the point where you measure and validate if you perpetually delay shipping. And for that reason alone, I’m thrilled to have launched our a True V1 Cnverg, and we’re looking forward to continuing the journey.

Also: if you’re looking to launch on Product Hunt, get in touch with Kirk, who’s a “Hunter” and can get things on the platform. Kirk raves about Product Hunt as a marketing tool.
“It allows you to get global feedback and exposure, and see traffic spikes unlike any other channel we’ve witnessed before,” he said. “Being a ‘Hunter’ on Product Hunt also has expanded my network in the tech and startup community significantly, and it really is a small ecosystem. The incoming messages on my inbox from people at companies I have looked up to for a long time are a testament to that.”