How to (Zil)Blow your Launch

Posted on February 8, 2006 ·

We’ve just seen the coCoRush, a masterpiece of viral launch by coComment. Don Dodge elaborates on the “The new way to launch your product or company”.

Zillow almost had a spectacular launch today. They really had it all: Presenting at Demo today, featured by the NY Times, CNET, Techdirt, SiliconValley.com, SiliconBeat, BuzzMachine, Stowe Boyd, Paul Kedrosky, Bubble 2.0 … just about the whole world.

All this hoopla to what end?

I simply don’t get it. When you generate that much hype, wouldn’t it be reasonable to expect huge traffic? Especially when the Founder is not a newbie, he went through this with Expedia.

I tried to access the site 5 times. I’ve given up, couldn’t care less. How many other users lost interest the same way? Of course with a $32M warchest this is not devastating to Zillow, they will come back, but for a smaller unfunded startup this mistake could be fatal.

After all, you only get to launch once. Don’t (Zil)blow it.