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The unglamorous 90 days between PH and AppSumo

· Avery NXR

Every launch playbook talks about the launch. Almost nobody talks about what happens BETWEEN launches.

The 90 days between our PH launch and our AppSumo launch is where the actual work is happening. It's not exciting. It's essential.

Sharing what our unglamorous 90 days actually look like.

What we're NOT doing

First, the tempting things we're skipping:

Not doing another PH launch. Some products relaunch on PH 6 weeks later. We're not. Once burned by wrong-audience, no rushed second attempt.

Not chasing viral moments. No aspirational Twitter threads promising 10x growth. No "shocking numbers" case studies. Steady grind, boring wins.

Not raising capital. Our runway is stable. Fundraising conversations distract from execution. Q1 2027 conversation, not Q3 2026.

Not adding aspirational features. No fancy new capabilities. We're refining, not expanding.

Not touring podcasts as "how we launched" content. We haven't earned that story yet. Ask us in 6 months.

What we ARE doing

Weeks 1-3 (post-PH nurture):

  • Personal welcome emails to every PH signup
  • Individual calls with 30+ prospects from PH pipeline
  • Case study interviews with early customers
  • Onboarding audit — identifying friction points
  • Bug fixes from PH-launch-week issues

Weeks 4-6 (foundation building):

  • Ship first 15 templates
  • Discord community opens
  • Blog + Twitter content cadence (weekly)
  • Hacker News Show HN (Week 4)
  • AI directory bulk-submissions (Week 5)
  • YouTube tutorial cadence begins

Weeks 7-8 (AppSumo application):

  • AppSumo Select application submitted
  • Contract support hire onboarded
  • Landing page for AppSumo built
  • Avery Creator SKU shipped
  • Legal review of lifetime commitment complete

Weeks 9-11 (AppSumo preparation):

  • AppSumo Partner Manager call
  • Deal structure finalized
  • 30 templates complete
  • Custom onboarding flow for AppSumo tier
  • Existing customer communication about upcoming LTD

Week 12 (AppSumo launch):

  • The launch itself
  • Featured slot activates
  • Founder engagement throughout

Why this timeline is uncomfortable

12 weeks of mostly quiet work isn't glamorous. Nobody tweets about "here's my 4-hour session refining the onboarding flow."

But:

  • Every friction we remove now improves activation later
  • Every case study we build now becomes marketing later
  • Every template we ship now compounds in the marketplace
  • Every support process we harden now saves us during AppSumo scale
  • Every runway conversation Ruban has now buys us Q1 optionality

Silent work looks like nothing. It becomes everything.

What we've learned so far (Week 3 update)

Some patterns from the first three weeks:

Personal outreach works better than expected. Reply rate on founder emails to PH signups is ~40%. That's much higher than any automated sequence we've tried.

Case study interviews yield product insights. Every 1-hour customer interview generates 3-5 concrete product improvements. This is our new highest-ROI product research method.

PH thread continues generating traffic. Late comments on the PH thread still convert. The "launch is over" moment is more diffuse than we assumed.

Content library is compounding. Blog posts we published 6-8 weeks ago are now generating organic search traffic. Not viral. Steady. Compounding.

Team energy is recovering. Post-launch week was exhausting. By Week 2, sustainable pace. By Week 3, energy is back.

What we're worried about

Being honest about anxieties:

Anxiety 1: AppSumo Select rejects us. ~99% of applications get rejected. If ours does, we've spent 8 weeks on prep for nothing. Mitigation: fallback is AppSumo Marketplace (higher AS cut, but still viable channel).

Anxiety 2: Templates take longer than planned. 30 quality templates in 8 weeks is aggressive. If we slip to 20, launch quality suffers. Mitigation: prioritize the top 15 templates. Ship marketplace with fewer.

Anxiety 3: The support hire is hard. Finding a good contract support person for a 6-8 week gig at reasonable rate is harder than we thought. Mitigation: expand the search geography, use founder network for referrals.

Anxiety 4: The marketplace doesn't seed. If we launch marketplace with 30 templates and users don't publish any, the flywheel doesn't start. Mitigation: pre-launch outreach to potential creators. Guarantee first 100 published templates go through a curated onboarding.

Anxiety 5: Cash flow gap between launch and payout. AppSumo pays T+60. We need 90+ days runway independent of payout. We have it, but a tight month could pressure us. Mitigation: no discretionary spending Weeks 10-14.

What I want other founders to hear

Between launches is where the work is.

The launch is 24-72 hours. The between is 8-12 weeks. If the between doesn't get its due, the next launch fails for the same reasons as the last.

Personal outreach. Case studies. Onboarding audits. Templates. Community. Content compounding. Support processes.

None of this is exciting. All of it matters.

If you're between launches right now — good. This is where the compound interest of the business is earning.

Don't optimize for the next launch moment. Optimize for the quiet week that makes the next launch work.

For anyone in a similar 90-day window

Three concrete things worth doing:

  1. Personal outreach to every previous-launch signup. Reply rates will surprise you.

  2. Case study interviews with 5-10 early customers. Best product research investment you'll make.

  3. Publish one substantive piece of content per week. Not launch content. Actual insight content. It compounds.

That's it. That's the whole playbook for the between.

Boring. Effective. What we're doing.

→ avery.software — the quiet work is real.