I wanted a place for developers to discover awesome dev-first products and for founders to find inspiration.
It started last year as an open collection, a public repository that lists past and upcoming launch weeks — a week where a dev-first company announces a new feature every day.
introducing launchweek.dev
Paul Copplestone, CEO & co-founder of Supabase, reached out later on Twitter/X:
We own
launchweek.dev. Perhaps we can repurpose it and use it for the entire dev community?— Paul Copplestone, CEO & co-founder of Supabase
Four weeks ago, we refreshed the project.
We introduced a new layout, logo, and color theme. We launched social accounts on Twitter/X and Bluesky (follow us) and started a newsletter, too.
People reached out asking:
Is it an alternative to Product Hunt?
That made me think about the future of this project.
this is not another Product Hunt
Product Hunt is a place where I enjoy hanging out, so I'm humbled by the comparison. launchweek.dev is different thought for three main reasons:
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It focuses on the dev tools space
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Filtered out by default
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Spam-free by design
focused on dev tools
First, it focuses on the dev tools space.
Developers are the target audience. Serverless and API-first are frequently used keywords. Usually, this means that the announcements include some code examples. And if you want to add your launch week, there's no submit form — you need to create a pull request.
filtered out by default
Second, featured products are filtered out by default.
Launch weeks are challenging. They create buzz and excitement around the product. They require planning and coordination across the team, too. Running a launch week has a "cost" for one company — if many experimented with it, few companies managed to do it consistently. This year, we tracked 122 launch weeks run by 92 different companies. Only 7 companies have run 3 launch weeks or more this year: Highlight, Supabase, Daytona, Outerbase, Mux, Memfault, Wasp. 7 companies — in the world.
spam-free by design
Third, this place is spam-free by design.
Because launch weeks filter out featured products by default, there’s no need to add an upvote system to find out the best products, no need to hack (read: spam) the system to be Product Of The Week (POTW). Take this year 2024. If you exclude the Mega Launch Week that featured 22 developer tools, there were exactly 2 launches per week on average. When your team runs a launch week, you are POTW by default.
From my perspective, this fundamentally changes the way it works.
Launch weeks are high peaks — 5 announcements in 5 days — the most significant "sign of life," Zeno Rocha said, and they require effort. Launch weeks are so intense. We should celebrate them, not add a layer of stress with competition. launchweek.dev is a place that shines a spotlight on those dev-first companies that run launch weeks, those teams that ship.
looking forward
To wrap up, launchweek.dev is a place for developers to discover great dev-first products and for founders to find inspiration and learn how to run successful launch weeks.
Starting today, I'll maintain the social accounts and post weekly about upcoming launch weeks, insights, and best practices. Every week, you'll get an email on what companies announced the previous week and what companies will launch next. I'm also working on improving product discovery and building comprehensive guides.
Please let me know if you have any expectations. It started as an open-source project and will remain open-source forever — star this repo.
Oh, and one more thing — I couldn't be able to build on this vision without sponsors, and I'm thankful for Supabase's early support. If you want to help and support me, please reach out.
Thank you for your time reading this note. You can follow me @fmerian on Twitter/X. I'm building launchweek.dev in public.
Enjoy your day — and keep launching!