GlossaryLaunching
What is a launch week?
Also called: weekly launch, launch week leaderboard
Definition
A launch week is either a week-long cycle on a weekly launch platform, where products compete on one leaderboard for seven days, or a company's own week of announcing a new feature every day.
Launch week, explained
The phrase has two common meanings, and founders run into both.
On weekly launch platforms, the launch week is the cycle your product belongs to. Instead of a single day, launches share a leaderboard for a whole week, often defined by the ISO week number (for example, week 39 of 2026 runs Monday to Sunday). The longer window gives you time to share, answer comments and recover from a slow start, and it's friendlier to founders in time zones far from the platform's reset time. The trade-off is more competition per board and less of a single-day spike.
The other meaning is a marketing format. Developer-tool companies like Supabase run "Launch Weeks": several days in a row, each with a significant release or announcement, packaged as one event. Supabase describes its version as five days of launches. It gives a small team a reason for people to check back daily and a lot of material for social posts, docs and changelog pages.
Both have an SEO side. On a weekly platform, the permanent listing page is what lasts; the week's leaderboard is temporary. For a company launch week, every announcement should have its own page (a changelog entry, docs page or blog post) so the attention turns into indexed pages that keep attracting searches.
Whichever you're doing, plan the week: what goes out each day, who's answering comments, and where you'll point people. A launch week without a plan becomes one busy day and six quiet ones.
Why it matters for founders
The week format suits small teams: more time to engage on a platform, or more moments to be noticed in your own announcements. Planning it well turns short-lived attention into pages and links that last.
Example
A product launches on LaunchRanked in ISO week 39. The founder shares it on Monday, posts a demo video on Wednesday, answers every comment, and by Friday has feedback from a few dozen people and a permanent product page.
Common mistakes
- Treating a weekly launch like a daily one and going quiet after day one.
- Company launch weeks with no pages behind the announcements.
- Announcing features that aren't actually available yet.
- Not planning who answers comments each day.
Sources
Checked
Related terms
- Launch platformA launch platform is a website where makers post new products for a community to discover, vote on and discuss, usually on a daily or weekly cycle with a leaderboard. Product Hunt is the best-known example.
- UpvoteAn upvote is a vote of support for a launch on a platform like Product Hunt. Upvotes largely decide where a launch sits on the leaderboard for its day or week.
- MakerA maker is a person who built the product being launched, such as a founder, developer or designer, and is listed as such on a launch platform. A hunter is whoever submits the launch, who may not be a maker.
- Badge backlinkA badge backlink is a small "Featured on" image with a link back to a launch platform or directory, placed on your site. Some platforms make their followed link to you conditional on keeping it.