Launch checklist.
The other half.
Every launch checklist covers billing, error states and the terms page. Almost none cover whether anyone will ever find the thing - which is the half that decides if the launch mattered.
Why most launch checklists fail you
They were written by engineers, for engineers, about the parts engineers control. That's why they're excellent on error handling and silent on whether a stranger understands your homepage.
The result is a product that launches technically flawless into complete silence, and a founder who concludes the market doesn't want it. Usually the market never found out it existed. Both halves matter; only one is ever written down.
The four items that carry most of the weight
- Search Console verified before launch. Not after. Search data cannot be backfilled - every day unverified is a day of your launch curve you can never see. It takes four minutes.
- The four-second test, on actual strangers. Show the page for four seconds, take it away, ask what it does and who for. If they can't answer, no channel will save you.
- One instrumented action. Not signups - the action that means someone actually got the value. If it isn't recorded, launch day produces a feeling instead of a fact.
- Content in the raw HTML. If your page needs JavaScript to show its text, crawlers and AI models may see an empty shell. Common in AI-built sites, invisible until you check, and fatal to everything downstream.
A launch is one day; distribution is the other 364. The checklist above gets you to the starting line in a state where the work afterwards can compound - which is the actual point. What happens after is covered in how to get your first users.