I have a confession to make: I sometimes move too fast.

Speed in business is good buuuut….can lead to mistakes.

Landing page finished? Boom done! Launch immediately! Product ready? Tell everyone! New idea? Share it with the world!

Wait what do you mean the cart isn’t working? Ooops.

This has bitten me more times than I care to admit. Launching with obvious typos. Broken links on launch day. Messaging that made perfect sense to me but confused everyone else.

Thankfully I have a detail orientated business partner who smoothes the edges off my most hasty move!

Because the problem isn't just the errors - it's the bad first impression. You only get one chance to make a first impression with your audience. Blow it with sloppy execution, and people remember.

There's one small extra step that saves your hide: the soft validation launch.

It's a micro-action that takes one day (today!) but prevents weeks of reputation repair. What we’ll do is share with our champions first - people who know your journey and want you to succeed. They catch the obvious issues before strangers see them.

Let’s get started

Summary

Gotta Go Fast

• Moving too fast burns bridges

• First impressions matter forever

• Champions catch what you miss

Why Soft Launch First

Yesterday you built your landing page. It looks good to you. The messaging makes sense in your head. Everything seems to work.

It’s tempting to just hit the button and launch.

But you're too close to it.

You know your product intimately. You understand the context. You can fill in gaps automatically. Your potential customers can't. Stuff that is obvious to you won’t be to them. And that’s not because they are stupid - they’ve just spent less time with the product. No-one will ever know it as well as you.

Your champions bridge that gap. Beta testers who've used your product, build-in-public followers who've watched your journey, supportive friends who want you to succeed. They know enough about what you're building to give intelligent feedback, but they're not so close that they miss obvious issues. We’ll leverage that today.

This soft launch serves three purposes. It catches obvious (dumb) errors like broken links, typos, or confusing messaging that you've gone blind to after staring at it all day. It tests whether your value proposition makes sense to people who aren't living inside your head. And (sneakily!) it builds anticipation with your champions, making them feel special and more likely to share when you launch wider.

It's insurance against embarrassing yourself tomorrow.

Who Gets the Soft Launch

Your soft launch audience should be people who are already invested in your success.

• Beta testers from Week 5 who've used your product and understand what you're building.

• Build-in-public followers who've been commenting on your updates and have context about your progress.

• Close friends and family who want you to succeed and will tell you honestly if something doesn't make sense.

• Supportive LinkedIn connections who've engaged with your content and shown interest.

• and so on..

Aim for 10-15 people. This isn't about scale - it's about quality feedback from people who care before we launch wide.

How to Ask for Feedback

Don't just send your link and ask "what do you think?" That's too vague and puts all the work on them. Remember, we need to make this frictionless - always! You do the work so they don’t have to.

Instead, be specific about what you need. Tell them you're launching your waitlist tomorrow and would love their eyes on the landing page first. Ask specifically whether it makes sense what you're offering, whether they'd know what to do next, and if anything seems obviously broken or confusing.

Frame it as taking just two minutes to check and looking for glaring issues before you go wider. Basically: “am I being dumb?”. Most people are happy to spend two minutes preventing you from making a public mistake. Frame it as helping you avoid embarrassment rather than asking for a favour. People like feeling helpful, especially when the ask is small and specific.

Here’s a quick prompt to generate the message for you.

I need to do a soft validation launch of my landing page before tomorrow's wider launch. Help me create outreach messages for different types of champions. My landing page: [PASTE YOUR LANDING PAGE URL]
What I'm launching: [BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF YOUR PRODUCT/WAITLIST] Create personalised outreach messages for: 1. Beta testers from my testing week - reference their involvement in testing, ask for feedback on whether landing page matches their experience, make it feel like exclusive early access 2. Build-in-public followers - reference them following my journey, position as "almost ready to launch publicly," ask for quick feedback before wider announcement 3. Close friends/family - personal tone asking for honest opinion, focus on "does this make sense to someone outside tech," ask them to be brutally honest For each message type, keep it very brief, be specific about what feedback you need, make it easy to respond quickly, and show appreciation for their time. Also create a simple follow-up template for collecting and organising their responses.

This will give you ready-to-send messages for each audience type. All you need to do is send them out et voila.

And when they send in messages go ahead and make the fixes. Importantly remember to thank them! Like before we want to make sure our champions want to be part of our success - so gratitude is important! Don’t forget to say thank you!

Your Deliverable Today

Super basic day today. Use the prompt to generate “plz help” messages and send them out. Then apply any fixes and thank them.

Doing so sounds mundane and unimportant. But it’s going to make tomorrow a lot smoother and avoid us from making silly mistakes.

Build in Public Content

Share your soft validation approach

"Day 29 of AI Summer Camp: Soft launching to supports before going wide.

Tomorrow I go wide so making sure everything is ready!

Let’s see what embarrassing errors we can catch before going public.”

For fun you can also talk about some of the worst mistakes you made. It makes for good content.

What's Next?

Tomorrow is launch day - sharing your waitlist with the communities that helped you build and test your product. We'll add the waitlist functionality and then finally start getting the word out.

Keep Prompting,

Kyle