How to Plan a Product Launch in 90 Days

Most product launches fail before launch day. Not because the product is bad, but because the plan is either nonexistent or unrealistic. Founders try to cram twelve months of work into six weeks, or they drift through months of "building" without ever shipping.

A 90-day product launch plan fixes both problems. It gives you enough time to validate, build, and ship -- but not so much time that you lose urgency and drift into endless feature creep.

This guide provides a concrete, week-by-week framework for planning and executing a product launch in one quarter. Every milestone is specific. Every week has a deliverable. No motivational fluff, just a system you can execute starting today.

Why 90 Days Is the Ideal Product Launch Timeline

The 90-day window is not arbitrary. It sits at the intersection of urgency and feasibility, and research on quarterly planning cycles consistently shows that 12-week sprints outperform longer timelines for execution.

Short Enough to Maintain Urgency

With 90 days, every week matters. You cannot afford to waste two weeks debating your logo or three weeks researching the perfect tech stack. The constraint forces decisions. Decisions drive momentum.

Compare this to a six-month launch plan. In January, June feels distant. There is no pressure to start today. By March, you have burned half your time and built half of what you planned.

Long Enough to Do Real Work

Thirty days is too short for most products. You can validate an idea in 30 days, but building and launching a quality MVP requires more runway. Ninety days gives you a full month for validation, a full month for building, and a full month for launch execution.

Aligned with Natural Planning Cycles

Quarters map to business cycles, funding cycles, and personal energy cycles. You can plan your launch alongside your other quarterly objectives without creating a separate planning universe.

Setting Launch OKRs: What Success Looks Like

Before you plan a single task, define what a successful launch means. Vague goals produce vague results. The OKR framework gives you a structure for setting launch goals that are both ambitious and measurable.

Your Launch Objective

Your Objective is qualitative -- it describes the outcome you want in human terms.

Examples of good launch Objectives:

• "Successfully launch [Product] and validate product-market fit with paying customers"
• "Establish [Product] as a credible solution in [market] with early traction"
• "Ship a functional MVP and build an initial user base that provides actionable feedback"

Your Key Results (Milestones)

Key Results are the measurable proof that you achieved your Objective. For a product launch, consider these categories:

Product Key Results:

• Ship MVP with core feature set by Day 75
• Achieve less than 2% critical bug rate in beta testing
• Complete onboarding flow with less than 3-minute time-to-value

Traction Key Results:

• Acquire 100 beta users by Day 60
• Convert 10% of beta users to paid plans by Day 90
• Achieve 40% week-1 retention among early users

Audience Key Results:

• Build email waitlist of 500 subscribers by Day 45
• Generate 20 pieces of launch content by Day 70
• Secure 5 external mentions or reviews by Day 85

Pick 3-5 Key Results total. More than that splits your focus. The process of breaking down big goals into actionable steps applies here: your OKRs should cascade into monthly milestones, weekly targets, and daily actions.

Month 1 (Days 1-30): Foundation

Month 1 is about answering three questions: Is there a market? What exactly are we building? Who are we building it for? Skip this phase and you risk spending 60 days building something nobody wants.

Week 1: Problem Validation and Market Research

Deliverables:

• Document the specific problem you are solving in one paragraph
• Identify 3-5 competitor products and map their strengths and weaknesses
• List 20 potential customers by name (not "small business owners" -- actual people)
• Draft your unique value proposition in one sentence

Daily actions:

• Monday-Tuesday: Competitor analysis. Sign up for competitor products. Document what they do well and where they fall short.
• Wednesday-Thursday: Customer discovery. Reach out to 10 potential users. Ask about their pain points, current solutions, and willingness to pay.
• Friday: Synthesize findings. Write your problem statement and value proposition.

This is not busy work. Every conversation with a potential customer either validates or invalidates your assumptions. Five conversations in Week 1 will save you five weeks of building the wrong thing.

Week 2: MVP Scoping and Feature Prioritization

Deliverables:

• Feature list categorized as Must Have, Should Have, and Nice to Have
• MVP scope document (Must Haves only)
• Technical architecture decision (build vs. buy, tech stack, hosting)
• Rough wireframes or sketches of core user flows

Daily actions:

• Monday: List every feature you can imagine. Get it all out of your head.
• Tuesday: Ruthlessly categorize. The MVP includes only features that solve the core problem. Everything else goes to the "v2" list.
• Wednesday-Thursday: Sketch the core user flows. How does someone go from signup to value?
• Friday: Lock your tech stack. Stop researching. Decide.

Week 3: Audience Building Begins

Deliverables:

• Landing page live with email capture
• Social media profiles set up on 1-2 primary channels
• First 5-10 waitlist signups
• Content calendar for Months 2-3 drafted

Daily actions:

• Monday-Tuesday: Build a simple landing page. Use a no-code tool if needed. Include: headline, problem statement, value proposition, email signup form.
• Wednesday: Set up social media presence. Pick the channels where your target customers spend time. Not all channels -- one or two.
• Thursday-Friday: Share the landing page with your network. Post in relevant communities. Ask your Week 1 interview subjects to sign up.

Audience building starts now, not at launch. By the time you ship, you need people waiting to try it. A launch with zero audience is a tree falling in an empty forest.

Week 4: Technical Foundation and Sprint Planning

Deliverables:

• Development environment configured
• Core data models and architecture set up
• Sprint plan for Month 2 (4 weekly sprints with specific deliverables)
• CI/CD pipeline or deployment process established

Daily actions:

• Monday-Tuesday: Set up your development environment, repository, and deployment pipeline. Boring but critical.
• Wednesday: Build the data model. Define your core entities and relationships.
• Thursday: Create your Month 2 sprint plan. Four weeks, four sets of deliverables. Each week should produce something testable.
• Friday: Write your first automated test. Establish testing patterns early before the codebase grows.

Month 1 checkpoint: You should now have validated demand, a locked MVP scope, a growing waitlist, and a development foundation ready for building. If you skipped validation, go back. Do not proceed to Month 2 without evidence that people want what you are building.

Month 2 (Days 31-60): Build and Test

Month 2 is execution. Four development sprints, each producing working functionality. By the end of this month, real humans should be using your product and giving you feedback.

Week 5: Core Feature Sprint 1

Deliverables:

• Core feature #1 functional (the primary thing your product does)
• Basic user authentication and onboarding
• Internal demo-ready build

Daily actions:

• Focus 80% of development time on the single most important feature
• End each day with working code committed, not work-in-progress branches
• Run your build at end of week -- does it work end-to-end?

The most important feature ships first. Not the easiest one. Not the most interesting one. The one that delivers the core value proposition.

Week 6: Core Feature Sprint 2

Deliverables:

• Core feature #2 functional (the second most critical capability)
• User onboarding flow complete
• First internal user testing session (you and your team use the product for real tasks)

Daily actions:

• Continue building the next tier of Must Have features
• Dogfood the product daily. Use it yourself. Note every friction point.
• Update your waitlist with a progress update. Show what you are building.

Week 7: Beta Preparation and Content Creation

Deliverables:

• All Must Have features complete or near-complete
• Bug fixes from internal testing
• Beta signup flow ready
• 5 pieces of launch content drafted (blog posts, social threads, demo videos)

Daily actions:

• Monday-Wednesday: Final development push on Must Have features. Feature freeze by Wednesday.
• Thursday: Set up beta signup flow and feedback collection mechanism.
• Friday: Write the first two pieces of launch content. A product walkthrough blog post and a "why we built this" story.

This is also the week to start creating content for launch. You need a content engine running before Day 61, not scrambling to write blog posts while managing a live launch.

Week 8: Beta Launch

Deliverables:

• Beta released to first 20-50 users
• Feedback collection system active (in-app feedback, user interviews scheduled)
• Analytics tracking installed and verified
• First 10 user feedback sessions completed

Daily actions:

• Monday: Send beta invitations to your most engaged waitlist subscribers
• Tuesday-Wednesday: Monitor first users closely. Watch for confusion, errors, and drop-off points.
• Thursday-Friday: Conduct 5 user feedback calls. Ask: What is confusing? What is missing? Would you pay for this?

Beta is not a soft launch. It is a structured learning exercise. The goal is not to impress users -- it is to discover what is broken, confusing, or unnecessary before you launch to a wider audience.

Month 2 checkpoint: You should have a working product with real beta users providing feedback. Your analytics should show you where users drop off and what features they actually use. Your content pipeline should have 5-8 pieces ready or in progress. If you do not have real user feedback by Day 60, your Month 3 plan needs to adjust.

Month 3 (Days 61-90): Launch and Iterate

Month 3 is where preparation meets execution. You have a validated product, beta feedback, and content ready. Now you execute the launch sequence.

Week 9: Beta Fixes and Pre-Launch Prep

Deliverables:

• Top 5 beta feedback issues resolved
• Pricing page and payment integration live
• Launch email sequence scheduled
• Press kit or media one-pager created

Daily actions:

• Monday-Tuesday: Fix the highest-impact beta issues. Not all of them -- the ones that block conversion or cause confusion.
• Wednesday: Finalize pricing. If you are unsure, start higher than you think. You can always discount. You cannot easily raise prices after launch.
• Thursday: Set up payment processing. Test the entire purchase flow end-to-end.
• Friday: Prepare your launch email sequence (3 emails: coming soon, launch day, follow-up).

Week 10: Soft Launch

Deliverables:

• Product open to full waitlist
• Paid conversions tracked
• Launch content published (first 3 pieces)
• Outreach to 10 potential reviewers, bloggers, or communities

Daily actions:

• Monday: Open access to your entire waitlist. Monitor signups, activation, and conversion in real time.
• Tuesday-Wednesday: Publish launch content. Post your product walkthrough, founder story, and first problem-solving blog post.
• Thursday-Friday: Begin outreach. Email bloggers, post in relevant communities, reach out to potential reviewers. Personalize every message.

Week 11: Public Launch

Deliverables:

• Public launch announcement across all channels
• Product Hunt, Hacker News, or relevant community submissions
• Remaining launch content published
• Media and influencer follow-ups sent

Daily actions:

• Monday: Launch day. Send the launch email. Post on social media. Submit to Product Hunt or your industry's equivalent. Be available all day to respond to questions and feedback.
• Tuesday-Wednesday: Follow up on outreach. Respond to every comment, tweet, and email. Engage in community discussions about your product.
• Thursday-Friday: Analyze launch week data. What is the signup rate? Conversion rate? Where are people dropping off? What feedback is recurring?

Week 12: Post-Launch Optimization

Deliverables:

• Post-launch bug fixes deployed
• Onboarding flow optimized based on drop-off data
• First post-launch feature prioritized based on user requests
• 90-day retrospective completed

Daily actions:

• Monday-Tuesday: Fix the most critical post-launch issues. Prioritize anything that blocks payment or core functionality.
• Wednesday: Analyze user behavior data. Where do users get stuck? What features are unused? What do users request most?
• Thursday: Write your 90-day retrospective. What worked? What failed? What would you do differently?
• Friday: Plan the next quarter. Based on what you learned, what are the next 90 days about?

Breaking Launch Goals Into Weekly Milestones

The week-by-week plan above works because it follows a principle: every week produces a concrete, verifiable deliverable. Not "make progress on marketing." Not "do some coding." A specific output you can point to and say "done" or "not done."

The Weekly Milestone Formula

Every weekly milestone should answer four questions:

1. What exactly will be produced? (A landing page, 20 user interviews, a working feature)
2. How will I know it is done? (It is live, the interviews are transcribed, the feature passes tests)
3. What does this enable next week? (Each milestone unlocks the next)
4. What is the biggest risk this week? (Identify it Monday, address it first)

Sample Milestone Tracker

Here is a condensed view of all 12 weekly milestones:

If you are new to goal setting, start here. A milestone tracker like this transforms an overwhelming "launch a product" goal into 12 manageable weekly targets.

The Daily Launch Routine: Time-Blocking for Founders

A 90-day plan means nothing if your days are consumed by reactive work. You need a daily structure that protects launch-critical tasks from the chaos of email, meetings, and distractions.

The Founder's Time-Block Template

Time-blocking is the simplest way to guarantee progress on your launch every single day. Here is a template that works for solo founders and small teams:

Morning Block (2-3 hours): Deep Work

• This is your building time. Code, design, write -- whatever moves the product forward.
• No email, no Slack, no meetings. Phone on airplane mode.
• Tackle the highest-risk or highest-impact task first.

Midday Block (1 hour): Communication

• Answer emails and messages
• Respond to beta user feedback
• Update team or stakeholders on progress

Afternoon Block (2 hours): Growth Work

• Content creation and publishing
• Outreach to potential users, reviewers, and partners
• Community engagement
• Audience building

End of Day (15 minutes): Planning

• Review what you accomplished against today's plan
• Set tomorrow's top 3 priorities
• Log progress against weekly milestone

Protecting Deep Work During Launch

The single biggest threat to your launch timeline is allowing shallow work to consume your deep work hours. A two-hour morning coding session interrupted by three email checks produces roughly 45 minutes of effective work.

Guard your morning block ruthlessly. Turn off notifications. Close your email client. Tell your team you are unreachable until noon. The emails can wait. Your launch timeline cannot.

Common Launch Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

After examining hundreds of product launches, the same mistakes appear repeatedly. Every one of them is preventable.

Mistake 1: Feature Creep

What it looks like: Your MVP scope grows from 3 features to 12 between Week 2 and Week 6. You keep adding "just one more thing" because a beta user suggested it or a competitor has it.

The cost: You miss your launch date by weeks or months. The product becomes bloated and confusing. You never ship.

The fix: Write your MVP feature list in Week 2 and treat it as a contract. Every feature request goes on a "v2" list. Review the v2 list after launch, not before.

Mistake 2: Building Without an Audience

What it looks like: You spend 60 days building in silence. On launch day, you announce your product to ... nobody. Your waitlist has 12 people, and 8 of them are friends and family.

The cost: Launch day generates no momentum. You have a product with no users and no way to reach potential users.

The fix: Start audience building in Week 3. Post updates weekly. Share your building process. Engage in communities where your target users gather. By launch day, you should have 200-500 people who know your product exists and are waiting to try it.

Mistake 3: No Success Metrics

What it looks like: You launch and then ask "Did it go well?" without any predefined criteria for success.

The cost: You cannot optimize what you cannot measure. Without metrics, you make decisions based on feelings, not data. You might kill a feature that users love or invest in one they ignore.

The fix: Define your launch Key Results in Week 1. Track them from Day 1. Writing OKRs that drive results is a skill worth developing before your launch, not after.

Mistake 4: Perfectionism Disguised as Quality

What it looks like: The product is "almost ready" for six weeks straight. You keep polishing the design, rewriting the copy, and "fixing" things that are not broken.

The cost: You never launch. Or you launch so late that the market has moved on, your runway is shorter, and your energy is depleted.

The fix: Set a hard launch date in Week 1 and do not move it. Ship with known imperfections. Real user feedback on an imperfect product is infinitely more valuable than imagined feedback on a perfect one.

Mistake 5: Ignoring Post-Launch

What it looks like: You pour all energy into launch day and then collapse. There is no plan for Week 12 or the month after.

The cost: Initial users churn because bugs are not fixed and feedback is ignored. The launch spike fades with no sustained growth plan.

The fix: Reserve 25% of your Month 3 energy for post-launch. The work after launch day matters more than launch day itself.

Post-Launch: The 30-Day Review and Iteration Cycle

Launching is not the end. It is the beginning of a feedback loop that determines whether your product survives or dies.

The Week 13-16 Plan

After your 90-day launch sprint, the next 30 days should focus on three things:

1. Retention Analysis (Week 13)

• How many Day 1 users are still active at Day 7? Day 14?
• Where exactly do users drop off in the onboarding flow?
• Which features are used daily vs. which are ignored?

2. Feedback Synthesis (Week 14)

• Categorize all user feedback into themes
• Identify the top 3 feature requests by frequency
• Separate "nice to have" feedback from "blocking adoption" feedback

3. Iteration Sprint (Weeks 15-16)

• Fix the top 3 retention blockers
• Ship the most requested feature improvement
• Optimize the conversion funnel based on data

Planned vs. Actual: The Most Important Metric

The gap between what you planned and what actually happened is the richest source of learning for your next quarter.

Review your original 12-week milestone tracker. For each week:

• Did you hit the milestone? On time?
• If not, what caused the miss?
• Was the milestone itself wrong, or was execution the problem?

This planned-vs-actual analysis is not about self-judgment. It is about calibrating your planning for the next 90 days. If you consistently overestimated what you could build in a week, your next quarter's milestones should be smaller. If you underestimated audience growth, allocate more time to marketing next quarter.

Using Beyond Time to Track Your 90-Day Launch

A 90-day launch plan has dozens of moving parts. Trying to track them in a spreadsheet or sticky notes leads to lost context and missed milestones.

Beyond Time is built for exactly this kind of structured goal execution. Here is how to set up your launch tracking:

Set Up Your Launch Objective

Create a single Objective: "Launch [Product] and validate product-market fit." Set the deadline to Day 90.

Generate Your Milestones

Use the AI Milestone Generator to break your Objective into weekly milestones. The AI considers your context -- solo founder vs. team, technical vs. non-technical, available hours per week -- and generates a realistic roadmap.

Review and customize the generated milestones. Add dates that match your 12-week plan. Remove anything that does not fit your specific situation.

Track Planned vs. Actual Weekly

Each week, update your milestone progress in Beyond Time. The platform shows you planned vs. actual completion, so you can see at a glance whether you are on track or falling behind.

This weekly tracking habit takes five minutes and prevents the slow drift that kills most launch plans. By Week 6, you will have a clear picture of your execution velocity -- and the data to adjust your Month 3 plan if needed.

Build Launch Routines

Create daily routines that support your launch phases. Your Month 1 routine (heavy on research and outreach) looks different from your Month 2 routine (heavy on building) which looks different from your Month 3 routine (heavy on marketing and customer engagement).

Beyond Time lets you connect routines directly to your launch Objective, so every completed routine contributes to visible progress on your goal.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long does it take to plan and execute a product launch?

A focused product launch can be executed in 90 days (12 weeks). This includes 30 days for validation and foundation, 30 days for building and beta testing, and 30 days for launch execution and optimization. The 90-day timeline works because it is short enough to maintain urgency but long enough to build something real. Longer timelines tend to produce scope creep and procrastination rather than better products.

What should I do in the first week of a product launch plan?

Week 1 should focus entirely on problem validation. Interview at least 5 potential customers, analyze 3-5 competitors, and write a one-sentence value proposition. Do not write any code or design any screens in Week 1. The goal is to confirm that real people have the problem you want to solve and that existing solutions leave room for your approach.

How do I set OKRs for a product launch?

Set one qualitative Objective (like "Launch a validated MVP and acquire first paying customers") and 3-5 measurable Key Results that prove success. Key Results should span product metrics (features shipped, bug rates), traction metrics (signups, conversions, retention), and audience metrics (waitlist size, content published). Review your OKRs weekly and adjust Key Result targets if early data shows your initial estimates were off.

What is the biggest mistake founders make during a product launch?

Building without an audience is the most damaging launch mistake. Many founders spend 60-90 days building in silence and then announce their product to no one. Start audience building in Week 3 by creating a landing page, posting updates on social media, and engaging in communities where your target customers gather. By launch day, aim for 200-500 people who know your product exists.

How do I avoid feature creep during a 90-day launch?

Lock your MVP feature list in Week 2 and treat it as a binding contract. Every feature idea that comes up after Week 2 goes on a "v2 list" that you review after launch, not before. The MVP should include only features that solve the core problem. If your feature list does not fit on an index card, you have too many features.

What should I do in the first 30 days after launching?

The first 30 days post-launch are about retention, feedback, and iteration. In Week 13, analyze user retention and identify where people drop off. In Week 14, synthesize all user feedback into themes and prioritize the top 3 requests. In Weeks 15-16, ship fixes for retention blockers and the most-requested improvement. This cycle of measuring, learning, and iterating determines whether your launch momentum sustains or fades.

How do I track progress during a 90-day product launch?

Use a weekly milestone tracker with 12 specific deliverables, one per week. Each milestone should be binary (done or not done) and produce a concrete output like "landing page live" or "20 beta users onboarded." Review progress every Friday against your planned timeline. The gap between planned and actual milestones is your most valuable data for adjusting the remaining weeks.

Free Tools to Plan Your Product Launch

Ready to build your 90-day launch plan? These free tools will help you get started:

• Quarter Planner - Structure your full 90-day launch timeline with monthly themes and weekly focus areas
• AI Milestone Generator - Break your launch objective into specific, time-bound milestones personalized to your constraints
• OKR Generator - Create well-formed launch OKRs with measurable key results

Your 90-Day Launch Starts Now

You now have the complete framework: a month-by-month structure, week-by-week milestones, daily time blocks, and the most common mistakes to avoid. The plan is specific enough to execute and flexible enough to adapt as you learn.

The difference between founders who ship and founders who stall is not talent or funding. It is the willingness to commit to a concrete timeline, break it into weekly deliverables, and execute relentlessly for 12 weeks.

Your product launch does not need to be perfect. It needs to happen. Ninety days is enough time to validate, build, ship, and start learning from real users. It is also short enough that you cannot afford to waste a single week.

Pick your launch date. Count back 90 days. That is your Day 1.

Start today.

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