What did you ship this week?
Every startup needs these two Slack channels
Velocity drives growth. The faster you ship, the faster you learn. So how do you create a culture obsessed with shipping?
Shipping velocity can be notoriously hard to drive. It’s deeply connected to team skill, app architecture, company process.
But improvements come in all shapes and sizes, and sometimes big shifts can come from tiny tweaks.
One such tweak can be set up in minutes by anybody at your startup, creating cultural impact lasting years.
I recommend two Slack channels for every startup in the world: #demos and #shipped.
#demos and #shipped
The premise is simple:
#demos: to share and celebrate prototypes, mockups, works in progress.
#shipped: to share and celebrate what’s live with customers.
As Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said in 2022:
Ship products not slide decks
Inside growing companies, there’s a danger that product and engineering teams start shipping great slide decks instead of great products. It can be tempting to “manage up” and feel like a meeting went great with a beautiful deck shown to superiors. But our customers never see the slide decks we create. They only see the product.
So we’re experimenting with banning slide decks in product and engineering reviews. Instead of a slide deck, you can show:
A dashboard with your metrics — hopefully your team is looking at this at least weekly anyway
Figma mockups
But most importantly….show the product itself!
As startups grow it’s easy to lose sight of what matters most: delivering value to customers. Teams can spend more time talking about product work than actually doing it.
These channels re-center focus, making product progress visible and celebrated.
Why it works
Put simply: motivation. Builders get to flaunt the latest. Everyone else gets to admire. This feels good, so everyone leans in — focusing yet more energy towards shipping.
Breaking it down:
Real-time
Teammates see real-time progress. No waiting for updates, or worse, discovering product changes from customers (something I am amazed is so prevalent).High signal
Instead of needing to lurk in dozens of channels, teammates receive a curated feed.Recognition culture
Shipping is hard. Giving builders visibility gives them the recognition they deserve.Momentum drives habit
These channels reinforce product momentum. Teams viscerally feel this excitement and it becomes contagious.
Once created, these rapidly become everyone’s favorite channels. From CEO to latest hire, and everyone between.
User experience
As with any product, it’s critical to keep the user experience extremely simple to drive maximum adoption. Here’s how it works:
Someone shares a demo or launch in any Slack channel
Someone reacts with a dedicated emoji
The message is cross-posted to the #demos or #shipped channel
Now, imagine a stream of exciting demos and launches pouring in from all over your Slack.
Let’s unpack how to set it up.
Zapier
Set up takes <10 minutes in Zapier. Here are the steps:
Step 1 listens for the emoji reaction:
Steps 2 and 3 prevent target channel spam if multiple people emoji react:
Step 4 sends the message:
Delightful implementation details:
Notify the sharer. Tag the original poster, so they are notified about the cross-post can see all further reactions and discussion. This creates a positive feedback loop. Who doesn’t want that dopamine?
Link-back. Link to the underlying message to use Slack’s media unfurl. This makes original images easily viewed in the destination channel. Link to the original channel to let passersby dive deeper if they want.
Defaults matter. Make #demos and #shipped default Slack channels for all teammates, current and future.
As an added benefit on top of contributing to shipping culture, these channels mostly obfuscate the need for engineers, designers, and PMs to proactively write wider product updates. Just post, react, and keep building.
Common questions
If you create these channels be ready for the following questions:
Do we really need more channels?
The value of these channels vastly outweighs their cost. I recommend finding two other channels to retire if needed.
What if someone is shipping a thorny backend change not visible to end-users?
Share it. Just add a few words describing what is going on. These are often some of the most valuable updates to share, precisely because they are hard to see.
What if someone is just fixing bugs?
Share it. People love seeing pet peeve bugs squashed.
What if someone ships a non-product change?
Share it. I especially think it’s valuable for teams to know about less visible changes the GTM teams are shipping, like changing the refund policy.
Isn’t it extra work to have to share recordings and screenshots in Slack?
Ideally your team is already doing this. If not, then I would argue this is work that should be added for the benefits unlocked.Does this risk unsolicited feedback, slowing things down?
Feedback is either “helpful, in time”, “helpful, too late”, or “unhelpful”.
“Helpful, in time” is good: individuals can self-select into appropriate channels, driving the low entropy state that shipping demands.
“Helpful, too late” is symptomatic of a deeper process issue in the product process, usually requiring an upstream fix.
And each startup has its own way of handling “unhelpful”.What if someone doesn’t ship a lot? Will they feel left out?
I’m afraid you have a bigger issue.
Spin-offs
If you enjoy #demos and #shipped, feel free to take it further:
#experiments: Insights from growth experiments.
#insights: Takeaways from customer research.
#love: Glowing customer feedback to boost morale.
Each of these is a variation on the same general idea: low-friction, distributed methods to curate information. In doing so, benefitting everyone while creating positive feedback loops.
What could your team achieve with contagious shipping energy?
Credit to Carlton Keedy for creating the original #demos channel at Superhuman.