What is a launch week?
A launch week is five days with one major feature or announcement each day. Supabase, which describes itself as the open source Firebase alternative, has run them since March 2021. Ant Wilson, Supabase's CTO and co-founder, explained the method in How we launch at Supabase, published on 26 November 2021, days before the company's third launch week that year.
The idea came out of Y Combinator. Supabase started in January 2020 and joined YC, where the team found that Demo Day worked as an arbitrary deadline for all kinds of internal work. After the batch, the team recreated it: pick a date three months out and ship something big. That first internal deadline produced Supabase Beta. At the retrospective, someone asked why there should be only one launch, and Launch Day became Launch Week: one major feature or announcement every day for a week.
The first one ran in the last week of March 2021 and, by Wilson's count, shipped seven major features. Supabase's Launch Week post lists them by day:
| Day (2021) | Announcement |
|---|---|
| Monday 29 March | Pricing, including a free plan |
| Tuesday 30 March | Storage |
| Wednesday 31 March | CLI |
| Thursday 1 April | An open source UI component library (ui.supabase.com) |
| Friday 2 April | Connection pooling with PgBouncer, a workflow engine, and the move from supabase.io to supabase.com |
Wilson wrote that the first launch week brought an immediate uptick in growth rate, and credited a product-led growth strategy, with Launch Week as a key part, for growing the number of databases Supabase manages by 47% month on month for 18 months. Those are company-reported figures, and the post does not separate the effect of launch weeks from everything else.
How often does Supabase run a launch week?
In 2021, every three months, at the end of a product cycle. That meant three: March, Launch Week II in July, and Launch Week III starting on Monday 29 November, according to Supabase's Launch Week III post.
Each cycle in Wilson's post has the same stages:
- Planning meeting. The team, spread across 12 countries, brain-dumps everything about the company on a Google Jam Board, reviews goals and metrics, then lists and filters ideas.
- Kick-off. The list is often around 12 items, each with a lead and a couple of people helping. Some drop out and others come in over the following months.
- Time to work. Project leads choose their own method, from kanban boards and stand-ups to RFCs and fully async work.
- Pre-launch week. More check-ins, swarming on blockers, and testing by people who did not build the feature.
- Launch week, then rest. Each cycle ends with downtime and maintenance mode.
- Retrospective. What went well, what went badly and what can be improved, read aloud again at the start of the next planning meeting, along with the question of whether Launch Week is still relevant.
Scope stays flexible. If a project isn't ready, Wilson wrote, Supabase shouts about something else and includes it in the next one.
The format ran at least into 2025. Supabase's Launch Week page, checked on 20 October 2026, shows Launch Week 15, which ran from 14 to 18 July 2025, with one main-stage launch per weekday, a Build Stage of six surprise releases, a hackathon and community meetups. Supabase's top 10 recap of that week was published on 18 July 2025.
Does Supabase hold features back for launch week?
Very rarely. Wilson was explicit: "we very rarely hold back features until Launch Week." The team ships features as early as possible and mentions them in a monthly Beta Update blog post and newsletter, which mostly reaches existing users. Full write-ups, marketing copy and broad top-of-funnel marketing often happen during Launch Week.
The reason is reach. Wilson wrote that you can launch a feature many times over and still reach people who forgot, ignored or missed it the first few times, because a team close to its own projects tends to overestimate how far its marketing travels.
In practice: ship each feature when it is ready, tell existing users in your changelog or newsletter, and save the full write-up and the broad push for the week.
How far ahead should you line up press and partners?
Up to three weeks. Wilson wrote that some things, such as press, need to be organised up to three weeks before you plan to launch. Third parties need an early start too: if you are shipping an integration with another company, cross-company communication can block you.
The pre-launch week carries two more lessons Supabase learned the hard way:
- No shipping to production on launch day. After live-debugging production issues on Discord during an earlier launch, the team stopped doing it.
- Finish a week early. Major integrations should be done a week ahead, and writing the content and getting it edited can take a couple of rounds.
Put together, the lead times look like this:
| When | What Supabase does |
|---|---|
| Three months out | Planning meeting and kick-off; list of about 12 items |
| Weeks before | Review the launch list and plan supporting materials |
| Up to three weeks before | Press organised (third parties: start early, no lead time given) |
| One week before | Major integrations done; content in its last editing rounds; more check-ins |
| Launch day | A detailed, timed schedule; nothing new shipped to production |
| After | Rest, then a retrospective |
Which channels should each launch go to?
Whichever suits that feature. At Supabase, for most features, the engineer who implemented the code also writes the marketing content, so posts include deep technical discussion and the author is probably best placed to pick channels. Wilson gave two contrasting examples:
- ui.supabase.com: Supabase targeted front-end and design channels, made sure it ranked on Product Hunt, and asked friendly designers to help boost the message.
- Storage had a technical design story better suited to channels like Hacker News and to technical conference audiences more interested in developer experience.
Hacker News also gave Supabase an early jump. Before any launch week, an early user shared Supabase's site there; the post stayed on the home page for several days and, by Wilson's account, the number of databases Supabase hosted grew tenfold overnight.
On launch day, Supabase follows a detailed schedule. The example in Wilson's post:
| Time | Action |
|---|---|
| 7:30am | Twitter Spaces reminder tweet |
| 7:55am | Product Hunt goes live |
| 8:00am | Blog post goes live |
| 8:05am | Launch tweet 1 |
| 8:10am | Tweet shared with angel investors |
| 8:15am | Twitter Spaces go live |
Wilson admits a launch could run without such a fine-grained schedule, but launches get hectic, and it is easier not to have to think.
A launch week plan for a 1 to 5 person B2B team
Here is our adaptation of Supabase's format for a small B2B team, where LinkedIn, email and one or two communities matter more than Product Hunt. It assumes you shipped five things in the last three months that not every customer noticed.
| Day | Announcement | Main channel | Format | Ready by |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monday | The biggest feature or fix | Founder's LinkedIn, plus an email to customers | Post with a two-minute demo video | One week before |
| Tuesday | A smaller workflow improvement | LinkedIn and X | Before-and-after screenshots | One week before |
| Wednesday | An integration or partner update | Co-post with the partner, or a section in their newsletter | Joint post | Partner contacted three weeks before |
| Thursday | How it works: a technical or data deep-dive | Hacker News or a niche community your buyers use | Long write-up by whoever built it | One week before |
| Friday | Pricing, plan or roadmap update, plus a recap | Email to your list and all channels | Recap post linking all five | Two days before |
Keep three habits from Supabase: nothing new goes to production on launch days, major integrations are done a week early, and every cycle ends with rest and a retrospective. Our LinkedIn post templates and X post templates give you formats for the daily posts.
Two adjustments for a small team. First, one owner per day: the person who built the feature writes the post, as at Supabase, and the founder posts or reshares it. Second, keep the schedule short. A three-line plan per day (when the post goes live, when the email goes out, when you reply to comments) is enough.
What can you do this week?
Set the date and start the slow parts first. These steps are our suggestion.
List what shipped in the last 90 days
Pull it from your changelog, release notes or support replies. Mark the five that customers asked for or that change how they work.
Pick a week about four weeks out
That leaves the up to three weeks Supabase allows for press, an early start with partners, and a week to finish content early.
Give each day an owner
Whoever built the feature drafts the post and picks the channel. The founder edits and posts.
Contact partners and press today
Email any integration partner, customer or newsletter you want involved. Ask for one specific thing: a co-post, a quote or a newsletter section.
Book the retrospective now
Hold 30 minutes the week after. Ask what went well, what went badly and what to improve, and read the notes at the start of the next planning meeting, as Supabase does.
If your team has no marketer at all, our guide to marketing without a marketing team covers the rest of the quarter.
Frequently asked questions
How long is a Supabase Launch Week?
Five days, Monday to Friday, with one major feature or announcement each day. The first ran from Monday 29 March to Friday 2 April 2021. Launch Week 15 ran from 14 to 18 July 2025, with one main-stage launch per weekday plus a set of surprise releases, a hackathon and community meetups, according to Supabase's own pages.
How many announcements do you need for a launch week?
Supabase aims for one major feature or announcement per day. Its first launch week, in March 2021, shipped seven major features, with three on the Friday. At the kick-off of each three-month cycle, Supabase's list often holds around 12 items, and some drop out before launch while others are added, according to CTO Ant Wilson.
What happens if a feature isn't ready for launch week?
Supabase keeps the date fixed and the scope flexible. Ant Wilson wrote that at the planning stage it is often impossible to tell whether an engineering project will take 2 or 102 days. The team tries to have each project ready, but if one isn't, it announces something else and includes the unfinished project in the next launch week.
When should you contact press before a launch week?
Up to three weeks before, according to Supabase. In its November 2021 post on how it launches, Supabase's CTO wrote that press needs to be organised up to three weeks ahead, and that third parties, such as a company you are shipping an integration with, should be contacted early because cross-company communication can block a launch.
Can a very small team run a launch week?
Supabase says its internal accelerator model worked when it was a two-person team and was still working at 30 people in November 2021. Ant Wilson added that there was no telling whether it would work as well in other organisations. In Supabase's process, the engineer who built a feature usually also writes its marketing content.
Sources
- Supabase: How we launch at Supabase (Ant Wilson) (published 26 Nov 2021)
- Supabase: Launch week (first Launch Week, March 2021) (published 25 Mar 2021)
- Supabase: Supabase Launch Week III: Holiday Special (published 26 Nov 2021)
- Supabase: Launch Week page (Launch Week 15) (checked 20 Oct 2026)
- Supabase: Top 10 Launches of Launch Week 15 (published 18 Jul 2025)
- Siela: AI blog writer (checked 20 Oct 2026)