THE THING WE BUILT:

Launch Protocol

Three things can be true at the same time.

1️⃣ AI-powered development tools have dramatically lowered the barrier for making stuff. What used to require months of coding can now happen over a few nights/weekends.

2️⃣ On a noisy internet, standard offering pages have become universally bland. Landing pages feature the same three-column pricing table, the same "Most Popular" badges, the same corporate stock photos. They blend into each other with little differentiation in design or novelty.

3️⃣ There’s never been a better time to lean into the good old days of making weird, playful things on the internet. Except now we can build experimental experiences that both show and tell where Township is headed.

So we built a thing.

Help Explorer get to launch!

How it works:

• Navigate through "Validation Valley" as Explorer, a hopeful founder on a strange new world

• Use arrow keys (or buttons) to move through the phases of product development

• Progress from Prototype ➡️ Proof of Concept ➡️ MVP ➡️ Full Product

• Experience the difference between each phase instead of trying to parse service descriptions

• Guide your character through the journey of turning an idea into something real

  
  

Notes from building:

1. Language matters more when barriers are lower. Early on, we discovered potential clients treated "Prototype," "Proof of Concept," and "MVP" as synonyms. For startup folks or non-technical decision-makers, they might as well be. But for us, these terms have specific technical, feasibility, and timeline definitions that help us scope effectively and set realistic expectations. The geek software guy in me takes these distinctions for granted, but they’ve got client-critical differences for how and what gets built.

2. Wisdom becomes a key differentiator. As AI development tools get more accessible, our value isn't in knowing how to write code. It's in knowing what to build and not to build. We set expectations and mitigate risk. We apply hard-earned knowledge as we establishing guardrails for scope, budget, timeline, and who the thing is actually for (and who it's not) – all in line with clients’ goals and realities.

3. Show-and-tell beats tell-and-sell. I can now build a prototype in the time it used to take us to write a proposal. This silly little app demonstrates the same rapid prototyping approach we'd use for your business challenges - minus the pixel art and plus actual revenue potential..

4. Playful beats professional in a sea of sameness. When someone sees thirty similar landing pages in a week, they remember none of them. But they'll remember the one that let them guide an astronaut through product development phases. Playfulness isn't frivolous when attention is the scarcest resource. We think the cost of being forgotten is higher than the risk of being different.

5. It’s still probably helpful to have a succinct sales page. So we built one here. Playfulness gets attention. But problems get solved when a client hires us to do great work.

Built with ❤️ by Township

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