The launch-day run sheet: X, TikTok and Product Hunt, hour by hour

Launch day is long, loud and over before you know it. The founders who enjoy it are the ones who wrote everything down the week before, so that on the day their only jobs are pressing “post” and replying to people.

This is the run sheet we use for a consumer app launching on X, TikTok and Product Hunt. Copy it, change the times to suit you, and cut whatever doesn’t fit your app.

First, the clock#

Product Hunt days run on Pacific time: a launch day starts at 12:01am PT and ends at 11:59pm PT. Everything else on the run sheet bends around that.

For a UK team, Pacific time is usually 8 hours behind (for a few weeks around the March and late-October clock changes, when the US and UK switch on different dates, it’s 7). So a Product Hunt day runs from about 08:01 UK to 07:59 the next morning. US East Coast is 3 hours ahead of Pacific. Below we give Pacific and UK times; adjust for wherever you and your audience are.

The good news for UK founders: the start of the Product Hunt day lands at breakfast, and the US wakes up in your afternoon. The bad news: the day ends at breakfast too, so whoever’s on the late shift needs a nap planned in.

The week before#

The run sheet only works if everything it points at already exists. By the day before launch:

• The build is approved and set to manual release (or released the evening before)
• Store listing final: screenshots, preview, subtitle, description (our screenshot checklist)
• Product Hunt page drafted and scheduled: name, tagline, gallery with the film first, the maker comment written
• Every launch-day post drafted word for word, in one doc, with its time next to it
• Assets exported and in one folder: 16:9 film, 9:16 cut, a few short clips, screenshots, a poster image
• UGC creators know their posting times (spread through the day, not all at once)
• A list of people to message personally, each with a one-line reason
• Landing page ready to switch to “we’re live”, with store badges that actually link to the store
• Support covered: an inbox someone’s watching, and a way to hand out promo codes if you need to
• Everyone has had one full run-through of the sheet

ready to ship

Give everyone one job#

Even if there are only two of you, split the day into jobs so nobody does everything badly:

On an Ignite launch our crew covers these with you, and your lead is the captain. Doing it yourself, the founder should almost always be on replies: people want to hear from the person who built it.

The run sheet, hour by hour#

X: what to post#

• Upload the film natively. Not a YouTube link. The 16:9 cut, or a square one, with the version that starts a second in so autoplay opens on movement (more on cuts).
• Hook in the first line. The one sentence from your plan, not “Today we’re excited to announce…”.
• Link in the first reply. Posts with links in them tend to travel less far, so put the store link in a reply and say so (“link below”).
• One strong post beats a twelve-part thread. Save the long story for the midday update.
• Reply to everyone. Replies are where launches are won. A thoughtful answer to a stranger’s question often does more than the post itself.

TikTok and Reels: what to post#

• Native, vertical, captioned. Made for the platform, not a squashed version of the X post.
• Say the name out loud and put it on screen. TikTok captions don’t have clickable links, so people need to be able to search for you.
• Spread it out. Two or three posts on the day and the rest across the week. Creators posting from their own accounts at staggered times reach more people than everyone posting at 9am.
• Have more ready than you need. You’ll want to re-cut whatever works on day one with a new hook on day two. Our post on briefing creators has the formats we use.

Product Hunt: do and don’t#

Do:

• Schedule the launch for 12:01am PT so you get the whole day.
• Put the film first in the gallery and make the first image readable at a glance.
• Write a maker comment that sounds like a person: who you are, why you built it, what’s free, and one question you’d genuinely like answered.
• Reply to every comment, including the critical ones (especially the critical ones).
• Tell people you’re live and ask them to try it and tell you what they think.

Don’t:

• Ask for upvotes. Product Hunt’s own guidance says not to, and a link that says “please upvote” reads as desperate anyway.
• Buy upvotes, join “upvote exchange” groups or use vote rings. It’s against the rules, and it’s not how anyone wants to start. We don’t do it either.
• Copy and paste the same thank-you to every comment.
• Disappear after lunch. The day is 24 hours long.

The day after#

Launch day is the spike. What you do next decides whether it was worth it.

• Post a recap: what happened, what you learned, a genuine thank-you
• Thank the people who helped, personally
• Ask the happiest users if they’d write a line about the app (and keep it real: no invented quotes)
• Write down the numbers for yourselves before the excitement rewrites them
• Fix the thing everyone mentioned
• Re-cut the best videos with new hooks and schedule the next two weeks of posts

ready to ship

If that last list feels like a job, that’s because it is. It’s what our monthly plan, Burn, is for: 20–40 UGC videos a month, campaigns and design on call, from £6,000 a month.

A copyable run sheet#

DAY BEFORE   release app · check store link on someone else's phone · sleep
00:01 PT     Product Hunt live · maker comment
00:10 PT     X launch post (native film, link in first reply) · pin it
00:20 PT     site -> "we're live"
00:30 PT     personal messages
01:00-05:00  replies, all of them
02:00 PT     vertical video #1
05:00 PT     X post #2 (new asset) · LinkedIn
06:00 PT     waitlist email
08:00 PT     vertical video #2
09:00 PT     reshare best creator post · quote reactions
12:00 PT     midday update
15:00 PT     vertical video #3
16:00 PT     handover to late shift
23:59 PT     Product Hunt day ends
NEXT DAY     recap · thank-yous · next two weeks planned

Want us to run the day with you? Our launch day package (a launch plan, and we run the day across X, TikTok and Product Hunt) is one week plus the day, from £2,000. It’s on the menu. Or book a free call and we’ll look at your date together.