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What usually happens: You launch it. Nobody signs up. You incrementally add features. Still nobody signs up. You eventually quit.

Competition rarely kills you. Product-market fit is usually the biggest factor. If you can get easy PR and signups, then go take them. Your early users will know its a beta product and will be forgiving about bugs.

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It sucks, but this. Every beta I've launched has been disappointing with very, very little activity even when the sign up count is in the hundreds. I do however think betas are valuable, as it allows you to tweak things (sometimes large breaking changes) before launch.

I've been through this cycle too many times to count. Eventually it sunk in for me that having a great product/website doesn't mean much for its success rate. I've realized finding cheap ways to promote the product to its target audience is the real make-it-or-break-it part of the equation, unfortunately, and has little to do with conventional dev skills.

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