1. Validate & Position 0/6
Everything downstream is cheaper when you've proven someone actually wants this — and can say why you, in one sentence.
✓ Pressure-test the problem with real buyers, not friends Ten strangers who'd pay beats a hundred who say "cool idea". Talk to people before you build for them. ✓ Tear down your competitors — pricing, positioning, and where their traffic comes from Run their site through Ahrefs to see which keywords and pages actually drive their signups. That's a free content roadmap. ✓ Nail a one-line differentiator "X, but for Y", or "the only tool that Z". If you can't say it in a sentence, buyers won't repeat it for you. ✓ Decide your model: tiers, free trial vs. freemium, monthly vs. annual Pick the fewest tiers that still fit how people buy. Three is usually plenty; five is usually indecision. ✓ Pick a name you can actually own Check the .com, the handles, and the trademark before you fall in love. A clean exact-match domain still helps. ✓ Define the one metric that means "this is working" Signups, activation, or revenue — pick the one that proves demand, and instrument it from day one.
2. Build a Launch-Ready Site 0/7
You don't need a big site. You need a page that sells and the plumbing to take money and measure what happens.
✓ Buy the domain and a matching business email Google Workspace on your own domain — [email protected] reads a lot more fundable than a gmail address. ✓ Ship a landing page that sells, not a homepage that describes One promise, proof, one call to action. Framer, Webflow, or a Next.js starter get you there in a day — you don't need to hand-code it. ✓ Write the essential pages: pricing, about, contact, terms, privacy A visible pricing page and a real way to reach you both build trust — and both convert. ✓ Wire up payments before launch, not after Stripe for almost everyone. Run one real transaction end to end before anyone else has to. ✓ Install analytics you'll actually read GA4 for the funnel plus product analytics (PostHog, Mixpanel) so you can see activation, not just pageviews. ✓ Set up an email tool and capture addresses from day one The list is the asset; the tool is swappable. Start collecting before you have anything to send. ✓ Launch a blog on your own domain yourbrand.com/blog — not a subdomain, not Medium. This is what compounds into SEO rankings and AI citations later.
5. Prep for Launch 0/5
A launch is a coordinated push, not a button. The work is the week before, not the day of.
✓ Build a press / launch kit and put it on your site Logo, screenshots, founder bio, one-liner, and a short story. Make it trivial for anyone to write about you. ✓ Line up the journalists and creators who cover your space Find who wrote about your competitors, get their email, and draft the pitch before launch week — not during it. ✓ Prep your Product Hunt launch properly Assets, tagline, first comment, and a real list of people who'll show up. A rushed PH launch is a wasted one. ✓ Write every launch-day asset in advance The email, the X thread, the LinkedIn post, the PH comment — all drafted and queued before the day starts. ✓ Line up your network with ready-to-paste posts "Support appreciated" gets ignored. A link plus the exact text to share gets used.
7. Ongoing Growth: SEO, Content & AI Search 2026 0/8
Launch day is a spike; these are the channels that compound into a business. This is also exactly what we do — the rest of this section is our actual playbook.
✓ Do keyword research around your product and its use cases Target the terms buyers search when they're ready — and the questions they ask on the way there. Ahrefs, or GSC once you have data. ✓ Publish genuinely useful content on a schedule One or two strong pieces a week beats ten thin ones. Depth is what ranks — and what AI quotes. ✓ Optimize every page: titles, structure, internal links, schema A clear heading and a direct answer up top help Google and the AI engines parse — and cite — you. ✓ Build links the honest way Digital PR, original data, and being genuinely link-worthy. Guest-post spam is a liability now, not a shortcut. ✓ Ask the AI engines about your category — and see if you exist Run your key queries through ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Google's AI Mode. Note who gets named and cited. That gap is your GEO roadmap. ✓ Make your site machine-readable so AI can cite it Direct answers, clean headings, schema, and consistent facts across your site and profiles. AI recommends what it can parse and trust. ✓ Don't block the AI crawlers GPTBot, PerplexityBot, ClaudeBot and friends can't cite what they can't read. Our free AI crawler checker reads your robots.txt in seconds. ✓ Track rankings and AI visibility, not just traffic Watch where you rank on Google and whether the AI answers name you. Both are pipelines now — measure both.
Launching soon? Let us run the growth side.
Steps 1–6 are yours. Step 7 — SEO, content, and getting cited by AI — is exactly what we do , documented. Book a call and we'll build the channel that compounds while you build the product.
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