Clickpass launches! Launch story, feelings and post-analysis

So, this week has been completely crazy. Clickpass launched, which was really exciting and things have been going well. We were covered in Techcrunch.com:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/03/11/clickpass-could-change-the-way-you-surf-the-web/

With a great and positive review. Since then we had some really positive feedback both on the techcrunch comments, across the net and directly to us. Some of the best ones.

*Finally* someone has produced a credible way of implementing OpenID that is simple and straight-forward. This is revolutionary, and I wish them all the very best. – David Weston, tc comment

This is great - finally only one password to remember! We need more sites to take part. Good luck! – Nick Faull, tc comment

Its also been exciting watching the chatter on twitter. My favourites from:

I tried to use Clickpass. It's so simple and I like this concept. - roomrag

http://www.clickpass.com is the nicest OpenID provider yet. al3x

Doesn't happen often but I was blown away by a new startup called ClickPass. Think One-Click OpenID! – Paisano

Actually Paisano is now my favourite Clickpass user, he also blogged about us saying

I truly believe they are on to something big here.
I believe this is something everyone is going to use in the near-future. Why not get on board now?

Paisano, if you see this, thanks for your support and we hope we can live up to and beyond your expectations.

The day of the launch was pretty crazy. I woke at 7am in anticipation and for preperation. Plaxo integration was not yet finished and we were planning to launch at 9am. I found a hack around the issue at about 8:40, and then about 10 minutes later, Peter called me and said that the Techcrunch article was live, but the site was still behind a password! So I had to work frantically to disable that and role out the open version. Then 10 minutes later with only a little further testing Plaxo went live, and everything worked!

In terms of numbers, it’s a bit early to really gather much from the number but we had more than a thousand signups just in the first day! When I compare that to revmap (my previous startup, which didn't go anywhere), its like a different world. At the end of the day we do all this work and if no one uses it, it’s a bit of a let down, and I have been there and it was a good learning experience. But when people get it and use it and talk about it that’s a very fulfilling feeling.

Clearly we have lots to do, I feel like there is more work to do now then there was before we launched! But at least the path is very clear, we need more sites, we need to make installation so easy that its trivial, we need to look at our stats and what our users say to figure out how we can improve the experience and we need to add OpenID 2.0 support, and etc etc… Okay well the list is clear but it’s not short.

Anyway, its exciting. So what I learnt:

• Doesn’t matter how long you spend before launching there will always be loads of work to do

• It feels good when people use your stuff and like it

• I like replying to user feedback, its fun. I like having conversations with users.

• Friends made over time help in all sorts of subtle ways. That one is vague but I won’t explain further.

• Its more obvious what work you should do after launching.

• Its fun, but I knew it would be :)