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Shreyas M V · Published · 14 min read
Launch Week Distribution Plan: A Day-by-Day Checklist Across HN, Reddit, LinkedIn and X
A launch week distribution plan puts one launch on Hacker News, Reddit, LinkedIn and X in sequence, so you are present on one channel at a time: a Show HN on Day 1, Reddit on Days 2 and 4, founder posts on LinkedIn and X between them, and a review on Day 7. This page gives the calendar, the asset due each day and the platform rules that shape it. The sequence is Kanso's design, built from sourced rules and timings, and no source tests it against results.
What does a launch week distribution plan look like?
It is a seven-day calendar with a 30-day run-up, in which each channel gets one job and no day asks you to be live in two places that need you. The full calendar is in the table further down, and the short version follows.
- Day 1 belongs to Hacker News: a Show HN in the US Eastern morning window, with you there to reply.
- Reddit gets at most one post on Day 2 and one on Day 4, in communities where you have already contributed, and replies in between.
- LinkedIn and X carry short posts built from real work, never a request for upvotes.
- Day 6 has no new posts, and Day 7 is a review against the metric you wrote at T-30.
- The three top-ranking checklist pages name none of these four channels, so the calendar is what this page adds.
Two limits apply from the start. The sequence is Kanso's own design, and no source in the research measures how it performs. The platform rules inside it are sourced and dated.
What do the top product launch checklists cover, and what do they leave out?
They cover internal readiness well and leave out where to publish, because none of the three pages read names Hacker News, Reddit, LinkedIn or X. The table sets out what each one contains, based on the outlines and extracted text in the research package retrieved on 5 November 2026.
| Page | What it covers | Its handling of distribution | What is missing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Atlassian | Pre-launch, development, branding and marketing, sales and distribution, logistics, launch day, post-launch | Its sales and distribution step is about channel partners, resellers, sales collateral and fulfilment. Social media appears only inside a list of campaign channels | No day-by-day plan; none of Hacker News, Reddit, LinkedIn or X is named |
| Notion (updated 6 February 2026) | Four phases, three launch tiers, owners, QA, a go/no-go meeting one week out, go-to-market materials, post-launch review | Its distribution content is internal: briefing sales and support, and linking assets to tasks | No community or social channel is named in the extracted text |
| Product Leadership (19 August 2026) | Nine failure-mode questions: product-market fit, audience, ownership, alignment, buy-in, launch strategy, budget, metrics, post-launch plan | It asks how a launch will go live and what to measure, not where to post | No channel is named; a four-minute read by its own label |
These pages are still the right base for the parts they cover. Notion's guide and Atlassian's guide both set out phases, owners and readiness checks, and the calendar below borrows their go/no-go review and their owner rule.
What follows adds the channel layer. It does not repeat their pre-launch product work, such as market research, QA and packaging, which Atlassian covers at length.
What should you decide before the calendar starts?
Decide four things at T-30: who owns the launch, what number counts as success, how big the launch is and when the go/no-go review happens. These come from the three checklist pages and cost an hour, not a week.
- One owner. Product Leadership says launches become fragmented when responsibility is spread without a central driver. For a solo founder the owner is you, and writing it down is the step.
- One success metric, written before launch. Notion tells teams to set goals, define success metrics and pick the KPIs that connect to adoption or conversion. Product Leadership says that early on, adoption, engagement and user feedback are more useful than revenue.
- A launch size. Notion splits launches into three tiers: a new product or repositioning, a significant feature and a minor change. This calendar is built for the first tier. A minor release needs release notes, not a week.
- A review date. Notion recommends a go/no-go meeting one week before launch, with a documented decision to proceed, delay or reduce scope.
Notion also reports from its own research that 58 percent of teams regularly share updates while only 21 percent track dependencies or blockers across teams. That is Notion's survey, quoted as it gives it, and it explains why the owner and the review come first.
What should you do between T-30 and T-1?
Do nine tasks across five checkpoints: T-30, T-14, T-7, T-3 and T-1. The table assigns each to a channel, names the asset it produces and says where the task comes from.
How the table was built: we took the readiness steps from the three checklist pages, the Show HN rules and timing from Syften, the Product Hunt warm-up from Lenny's Newsletter and the Reddit approach from business.com, then placed each task by the lead time its source gives. Where a source gives no lead time, the date is Kanso's choice and the last column says so.
| When | Task | Channel | Asset | Basis |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| T-30 | Name one owner and write the success metric in one line | All | A goal sentence and an owner | Sourced principle (Notion, Product Leadership), adapted by Kanso |
| T-30 | Join three to five subreddits where buyers discuss your problem, read each rule set, answer questions without linking | A sheet of subreddit rules, one per community | business.com names trust in niche communities as a core tactic; the schedule is Kanso's | |
| T-30 | If Product Hunt is part of the plan: tell your community and ask supporters to create accounts now | Product Hunt | A list of supporters | Lenny's Newsletter guide |
| T-14 | Decide whether the launch is a Show HN or a regular submission by asking one question: can a visitor try it today | Hacker News | A one-line decision | Syften's reading of the Show HN rules |
| T-14 | Start a build log and draft two LinkedIn posts and one X thread from it | LinkedIn, X | Three drafts marked unpublished | Kanso's own posting method; no engagement data supports it |
| T-7 | Hold the go/no-go review against the readiness criteria and write down the decision | All | A dated go, delay or reduce-scope decision | Notion (one week before); Atlassian (readiness criteria) |
| T-7 | Write the Show HN title and the first comment | Hacker News | Title and first-comment text | Syften |
| T-3 | Make the product usable without a waiting list, and tag each channel's link with a source, medium and campaign | All | One tagged link per channel | Syften (waiting-list pages do not qualify as Show HN); tagging is Kanso's practice |
| T-1 | Convert Day 1 times to your own zone, block the reply hours, proofread every asset | All | A calendar block and a final asset folder | Syften (post when you can stay and reply) |
The Reddit work starts earliest because it cannot be hurried. business.com names building trust in niche communities as a core tactic, and a first post in a subreddit where you have never commented is the pattern its guidance warns against.
What is the day-by-day launch week calendar?
The calendar gives each channel one job per day and one asset to have ready, from the Show HN on Day 1 to the review on Day 7. Day 1 should be a weekday, because Syften's timing advice puts the Show HN in a US weekday morning.
| Day | Hacker News | X | Asset due | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Day 1 (a weekday) | Submit the Show HN in the US Eastern morning window. Post the first comment at once. Stay and reply | Read only. No posts | One launch post after the submission, linking to the product | One launch post and replies, linking to the product | Launch page, Show HN title, first comment, two social posts, tagged links |
| Day 2 | Answer every remaining comment. Do not resubmit | One post in the one subreddit whose rules allow it, or a reply in a live thread on the problem | What the first day's comments taught you, or a build note if there were none | One lesson from the comments | Reddit text written to that subreddit's rules; the lesson post |
| Day 3 | Reply to new comments only | Reply to replies. No new post | A decision-log post: why you built it this way | A short thread on the same decision | Decision-log text |
| Day 4 | Log feedback; reply to new comments | A second community, with different text, or a reply in an existing thread | Rest, unless you have a real customer-call lesson | Replies to people who tried the product | Second Reddit text; one customer lesson if it exists |
| Day 5 | Reply only | Reply only | A mistake-and-fix post, or a customer-call lesson | What changed in the product because of feedback | A short change note |
| Day 6 | Reply only | Reply only | No new post | No new post | Updated landing page and changelog entry |
| Day 7 | Reply only | Reply only | A short follow-up: what changed since launch | The same follow-up, shorter | Scorecard against the T-30 metric and a one-page retro |
Three rules sit under the table: one channel needs you live at a time, which is why Day 1 has Hacker News and nothing on Reddit; no text moves between channels without being rewritten to that channel's rules; and if a channel gave you nothing to post about, you post nothing.
The conditional cells matter. A “what the first day's comments taught you” post is only honest if there were comments, so the Day 2 cell offers a build note as the fallback.
How should you run Day 1 on Hacker News?
Submit a plain-titled Show HN in a US weekday morning, add one calm first comment, and stay to reply for the next few hours. Syften, a practitioner whose product watches Hacker News, gives that timing and says no hour is magic.
Four rules shape the day. The Hacker News Guidelines, as of October 2026, ask people not to use the site primarily for promotion, bar generated or AI-edited text and prohibit soliciting upvotes, comments or submissions. Per Syften's reading of the Show HN rules, a Show HN must be something people can try, so a landing page or a waiting-list sign-up does not qualify.
- Title: plain and close to what the thing is, with no capitals for emphasis, exclamation points or praise.
- First comment: who you are, the problem behind it, what is new or unfinished and what feedback would help.
- Text: write it yourself. Do not paste a drafted comment.
- Sharing: do not link the Hacker News thread in your LinkedIn or X posts with a request to vote. Kanso's reading is that this is the case the solicitation rule exists for, so link the product instead.
For a team in India the window is in the evening. The table shows the arithmetic, using US standard time, which applies from 1 November 2026 until March 2027: Eastern is UTC-5, Pacific is UTC-8 and India is UTC+5:30.
| Event | To UTC | To India time (UTC+5:30) | Clock time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Show HN window start (9:00 Eastern) | 9:00 + 5 hours = 14:00 UTC | 14:00 + 5:30 = 19:30 | 7:30 pm |
| Show HN window end (12:00 Eastern) | 12:00 + 5 hours = 17:00 UTC | 17:00 + 5:30 = 22:30 | 10:30 pm |
| Product Hunt launch (12:01 am Pacific) | 0:01 + 8 hours = 08:01 UTC | 08:01 + 5:30 = 13:31 | 1:31 pm |
| Product Hunt push (7:00 am Pacific) | 7:00 + 8 hours = 15:00 UTC | 15:00 + 5:30 = 20:30 | 8:30 pm |
| Product Hunt push (2:00 pm Pacific) | 14:00 + 8 hours = 22:00 UTC | 22:00 + 5:30 = 03:30 next day | 3:30 am, next day |
Syften calls its window an availability plan and not a ranking trick. For the wider picture of what lands on the front page, the Show HN teardown reads the sources on titles, first comments and survival, and the Hacker News guide for B2B founders covers when to post, comment or stay out.
How should Reddit fit into launch week?
Reddit fits as one post at most on Day 2 and one on Day 4, in subreddits where you have already contributed, with replies in between. Each subreddit sets its own self-promotion rules, so the rule sheet from T-30 decides whether a post is allowed at all.
business.com names three tactics: contributing to high-visibility threads, building trust in a small number of niche communities, and using links and branded subreddits carefully. That is trade reporting that quotes marketing practitioners, so treat it as guidance, not a platform rule.
The two-post cap and the Day 2 and Day 4 slots are Kanso's choices. They keep you away from Reddit on Day 1, when Hacker News needs you, and they stop you from posting the same text twice. If a community bans self-promotion outright, skip the post and reply in a live thread on the problem instead.
Kanso's guide to promoting a startup on Reddit without getting banned sets out the first 30 days in more detail, and it is where the T-30 Reddit task comes from.
What should LinkedIn and X carry during launch week?
They should carry short posts drawn from real work, one launch post on Day 1 and a build or decision note on most later days. The evidence here is thinner than for Hacker News: no source in this package gives rules, timing or engagement data for either site.
What is documented is the purpose. LinkedIn's own founders guide frames the goals as building a personal and professional brand, sharing thought leadership and appealing to investors, employees and prospects. That fits a founder-voice post about a decision, a build note or a customer lesson.
The post shapes in the calendar come from Kanso's method for LinkedIn for technical founders: a decision log, a build note, a customer-call lesson and a mistake and fix, each written from a log of what actually happened. Kanso's evidence review of X for B2B SaaS found that the three guides it read came from vendors and gave no method for their figures, so this page claims nothing about reach on X.
| Channel | Job in the week | Rule or fact behind it | Kind of evidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hacker News | Show HN on Day 1, replies on every later day | The guidelines bar generated or AI-edited text and soliciting upvotes; a Show HN must be something people can try | Documented (guidelines); Show HN detail from Syften, a practitioner |
| One post at most on Days 2 and 4, replies between | Each subreddit sets its own self-promotion rules; contribution comes before links | Practitioner and trade reporting (business.com); the cadence is Kanso's | |
| Up to five posts across the week, each from real work | LinkedIn's own guide frames goals as brand, thought leadership and appeal to investors, employees and prospects | Documented goals; the post shapes are Kanso's method | |
| X | Short posts that echo LinkedIn, plus replies | No source in this package sets rules or timing for X; see the separate evidence review | Analysis only |
What changes if Product Hunt is part of the launch?
Put Product Hunt on a different day from the Show HN, because both ask for you to be present at the same hours. Lenny's Newsletter guide recommends launching at 12:01 am Pacific and making pushes at 12:01 am, 7 am and 2 pm Pacific.
The conversion table shows the clash: the 7 am Pacific push is 8:30 pm in India, inside the 7:30 pm to 10:30 pm Show HN window. The 2 pm push falls at 3:30 am the next day. Separating the two launches by a few days avoids asking one person to run both at once.
The same guide starts the warm-up about 30 days out and says to ask supporters to create accounts early, which is why the T-30 table carries that row. Its figures come from a practitioner who sells launch help, so the details are in the Product Hunt pre-launch teardown, with each step labeled as prescribed, observed or inferred.
What should you measure, and when is the week done?
Measure the metric you wrote at T-30, plus a few leading signals, and call the week done on Day 7 with a written review. Product Leadership says early adoption, engagement and feedback give a faster read than revenue, and Notion says to evaluate against defined goals with a retrospective scheduled.
| Metric | Where to read it | When to record it | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|
| Visits by tagged source | Your analytics, by the source tag on each link | Days 1, 4 and 7 | Leading |
| Sign-ups or trials started | Your product's own records | Days 1, 4 and 7 | Leading |
| Comments and replies awaiting an answer | A count on each channel | End of every day | Process |
| Feedback items logged and sorted | Your build log | End of every day | Leading |
| Conversations that continued after a reply | A count in your log, with no names kept | Day 7 | Leading |
| Revenue | Your billing records | Day 7 and after | Lagging |
Judge a Hacker News launch by feedback and follow-up conversations as well as points. The analysis of 10,000 Show HN submissions puts the predictive power of Hacker News reception for survival at an R² of about 14 percent, which leaves roughly 86 percent unexplained (100 minus 14). That analysis is undated in the text Kanso read, and it measures whether a project is still online, not whether it found customers.
Write the Day 7 retro in one page: what you launched, what each channel returned, what you would change and who owns the follow-up. Product Leadership describes launch day as the start of real user interaction, which is the reason the plan ends with a review and not a celebration.
What is documented, and what is Kanso's analysis?
The platform rules and timings are documented by the sources named, and the calendar that arranges them is analysis. The two lists separate them so you can tell a rule from a choice.
- Documented: the Hacker News Guidelines ask people not to use the site primarily for promotion, bar generated or AI-edited text and prohibit soliciting upvotes, as of October 2026.
- Documented by a practitioner: Syften reads the Show HN rules as requiring something people can try, and suggests 9am to 12pm Eastern on a weekday as an availability plan.
- Documented by a practitioner: Lenny's Newsletter guide gives the Product Hunt timing and the 30-day warm-up.
- Documented: Notion recommends a go/no-go meeting one week before launch, and Atlassian names five readiness criteria.
- Documented: Kanso's agents draft or find, and never post for you. See the agents section below.
- Analysis: the seven-day sequence, and the rule that one channel needs you live at a time.
- Analysis: the cap of one Reddit post on Day 2 and one on Day 4.
- Analysis: the LinkedIn and X post shapes by day.
- Analysis: the advice not to link the Hacker News thread from social posts.
- Analysis: the scorecard, and the decision to leave Day 6 empty.
What this page does not have: a measured result from any launch, timing or engagement data for LinkedIn or X, Hacker News account-age or submission-limit rules, or the exact rules of any subreddit. For those, read the platform's own pages and the community threads on posting before you act.
Where do Kanso's agents fit into the calendar?
They fit in the drafting and finding steps, and you do the posting. Kanso does not auto-post and does not schedule X or LinkedIn posts, so every publish time in the calendar is a time you act.
- The Hacker News Agent finds relevant Hacker News conversations and recommends what to do next. It never posts.
- The Reddit Agent finds relevant threads and drafts replies for you to review and post yourself.
- The LinkedIn Agent and the X Agent draft posts from your marketing context, which you edit and publish when you are ready.
Drafts are a starting point: Hacker News bars generated or AI-edited text, so the Show HN first comment and every Hacker News reply must be yours. See the pricing page for plans.
Product launch checklist: frequently asked questions
What is a product launch checklist?
A product launch checklist is a shared list of the tasks, owners and dates needed to bring a product or feature to market. Notion's guide describes it as a framework that brings tasks, owners, timelines and dependencies into one place, and Atlassian says it should run from market research to post-launch evaluation. This page narrows that to the distribution week.
What should a product launch checklist include?
A product launch checklist should include a goal and success metric, a named owner, readiness checks, go-to-market assets, a launch-day plan and a post-launch review. Notion lists four phases (pre-launch planning, launch readiness, launch day and post-launch evaluation), and this page adds the part those guides leave out: what to do on each channel each day.
What is a launch distribution plan?
A launch distribution plan is the schedule of where each launch asset is published, by whom and on which day. The three top-ranking checklist pages cover internal readiness in detail but name no community or social channel, so the calendar on this page fills that gap with a seven-day sequence for Hacker News, Reddit, LinkedIn and X.
How far in advance should you start preparing for a product launch?
Atlassian advises starting planning at least 6 to 12 months before the target launch date for the product as a whole. For the distribution plan on this page, the sources support about 30 days: Lenny's Newsletter guide starts audience warm-up that far out for Product Hunt, and this page's calendar begins at T-30 for the same reason.
How do you know if your product is ready for launch?
Check it against stated criteria and record a go or no-go decision. Atlassian names product quality, market fit, competitive differentiation, sales and marketing readiness and operational preparedness, and Notion recommends a go/no-go meeting one week before the launch date with the decision written down.
What is key to a successful product launch?
The sources agree on clear goals, one accountable owner and teams that are briefed before launch day. Atlassian lists planning early, a clear audience and feedback collection, while Product Leadership argues that launches usually fail earlier than launch day, through unchecked assumptions and unclear ownership.
Why do teams need a product launch checklist?
Teams need one because launches tend to break on scattered information, unclear ownership and late-surfacing dependencies. Notion reports from its own research that 58 percent of teams regularly share updates but only 21 percent track dependencies or blockers across teams, a 37-point gap (58 minus 21), and presents a checklist as the fix.
What is the fastest way to launch a digital product when you are starting from zero?
No source in the research measures the fastest route, so this page gives no time. The shortest version of the plan here is one Show HN or one Reddit thread, one LinkedIn post and one X post, with the owner, the goal and the Day 7 review kept in place.
Should you build an audience first or build the product first?
The sources do not settle it. Lenny's Newsletter guide treats an audience as a 30-day warm-up for Product Hunt, while Atlassian puts market research and audience definition before product work. The calendar here assumes the product exists and that you have spent T-30 to T-1 contributing in the places you will launch.
What should you do before launch day?
Do the work in the T-30 to T-1 table: name an owner and a metric, read each community's rules, write the Show HN title and first comment, hold a go/no-go review, make the product usable without a waiting list and block the reply hours. Notion adds that sales and support material should be live before launch, which applies if you have either.
Sources
- Product launch checklist: How to ensure a successful launch, Atlassian
- Product launch checklist: Step-by-step guide (+ free templates), Notion
- Successful Product Launch Checklist for Product Managers, Product Leadership
- Hacker News Guidelines, Hacker News
- Hacker News Posting Guide: Rules, Show HN, and Timing, Syften
- Analyzing 10,000 Show HN Submissions, antontarasenko.github.io
- How to successfully launch on Product Hunt (when it's right for your startup), Lenny's Newsletter
- How to Use Reddit for Business Marketing, business.com
- A Founder's Guide to LinkedIn (From Concept to Revenue), LinkedIn Marketing Solutions
Note: Facts are attributed to the named source. Atlassian, Notion and Product Leadership were read on 5 November 2026. The Hacker News, Syften, Show HN analysis, Lenny's Newsletter, business.com and LinkedIn pages were read in October 2026 for earlier Kanso articles and were not read again for this one. Kanso ran no launch to build this plan and reports no results from one. Platform rules change, so confirm against each platform's own pages before posting. Kanso has no affiliation with any company named here.
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