Plan your Launch Timeline

The two-to-six week window before launch week. Use it for blueprint sign-off, asset production, message review, warm outreach, and dry runs. Most launches slip because pre-launch was treated as optional.

The seven days around launch day. Schedule the teaser, the launch-day post, the follow-up content, and the press embargo lift if you have one. Lock asset changes by Monday of launch week.

Hour-by-hour: when the post goes live, when the email sends, when the team starts replying, when the founder posts on each channel, and when you check in on signals. Put times in your timezone and be explicit about who owns each slot.

The week after. Schedule follow-ups with outreach contacts, the recap post, the thank-yous, and the debrief meeting. This is also when signals get categorized into themes for the debrief.

Each event has a title, phase, date and time, owner, status, and optional notes. Events are the unit of the timeline — keep them concrete ("Post launch thread on X at 9:00 PT") rather than abstract ("Social push").

One owner per event. Owners are accountable for the event happening, not necessarily for doing all the work. If an event has no owner, it has no plan.

• Planned — on the timeline, not started.
• In progress — actively being prepared.
• Done — completed.
• Skipped — intentionally dropped, with a note on why.

The launch detail page surfaces the next few timeline events so the team always sees what is coming up, not just what is overdue. Pair the timeline with Tasks: events are moments, tasks are the work that makes them happen.