Reality is that nobody will visit your site after you launch and you'll have to work really, really hard at getting those first few customers.
I've put my hopes into the 'launch rush' before and was crushed when it didn't happen. (Twice, actually.)
You built the MVP, and that's an awesome milestone, but that doesn't mean the hard work is over -- it's only a start of a different kind of work.
Just pull the trigger and deal with issues as they come in.
Exactly. I'm in the same boat, but I was prepared for it. I've been guilty of thinking the building of the product was the hard part. Convincing others of using your product is the real work.
An announcement on HN or PH is not going to do it. And it would probably only be a temporary spike if it did illicit interest.
My goal? Hang out where those who may be interested in my product are. Scan and search HN for relevant posts. Find relevant subreddits. Contribute to these communities, and don't only promote your product. At some point, there will be excellent opportunities to bring up how your product is an answer to a particular questions or problem. And it will be appreciated and you will hopefully get feedback and criticism.
There's all kinds of value from this – not just getting users.
What "big announcement" do you think you are capable of making that would result in some rush of visitors?
Gosh, most people have no idea how to make that happen. Do you? If you do, can I have some tips, pretty please?
Most likely, you don't even know how to engineer that. So, start putting it out there via whatever channels you are aware of that might work, such as Show HN or Twitter or whatever. It probably won't get the big rush you are expecting.
I say this as someone who sometimes posts things of mine to HN and they sometimes get a few dozen hits and eventually go up to like 100 or 200 page views. Yes, I also have one piece that has had around 40k page views over some period of weeks. In the grand scheme of things, this is not really a lot of traffic.
Even if you hit the front page of HN, it may not be the rush of visitors of your dreams of avarice. Going viral is the exception, not the norm.
Then we targeted reviewers of competing/related products. That's what the kicker was in the end. A small launch easily eats up all your time, so keep it simple. A continuous drip beats a big bang.
Is your product niche enough so that there's a handful of sites covering it? Reach out to them. That's all you'll need in the start, and honestly all that is possible for you to reach. Don't go the way of paid ads and such, put in sweat first.
PS: IMHO you don't get to decide if you reach MVP, it's the users that do so by telling you it's a useful product and they're happy to be using it. Then they'll start asking to add more features ;)
read this http://tractionbook.com/
Unless you spent time building something without knowing if people want it...
