Launch Checklist
Paid community launch checklist — pre-launch setup, launch day, and days 2–30 reference card
This page is a structured reference card for paid Slack community operators who need the launch checklist in scannable form — three-phase tables with pass/fail criteria for each item, the billing-to-invite threshold, the founding cohort size rule, the Day 3 conditional nudge pass criteria, the Day 7 scorecard four gates, and the day-30 decision table. For the narrative explanation of why each item is on the checklist and what each phase is trying to achieve, see the companion guide: Paid community launch checklist: what to do in the first 30 days. This page is for the operator who already knows the “why” and needs the items in table form during execution.
TL;DR
Three phases. Phase 1 (pre-launch, 5 items): channel audit ≤8 channels, billing-to-invite gap ≤5 min, Day 0 DM tested at 2 send times, value proposition specificity check, single-action announcement draft. Phase 2 (launch day, 5 items): first invite batch ≤25 members, personal operator DM to every founding member, single-action announcement in #general, same-day monitoring of 4 signals, first-day follow-up DMs to non-posters within 3 hours. Phase 3 (days 2–30, 4 items): Day 3 conditional nudge QA, Day 7 operator scorecard across 4 gates, week-two async challenge days 10–14, day-30 cohort activation rate audit. Day-30 decision: ≥65% → scale normally; 45–64% → scale with one fix; <45% → pause and diagnose before cohort 2.
Phase 1 — Pre-launch setup
The five pre-launch items below must be completed before the first member is invited. Most paid community launch failures trace to at least one of these five items being skipped or deferred to “after we see how things go.” Each item has a specific pass criterion; if the item doesn’t have a clear pass/fail state, the operator doesn’t know whether it’s done. For the full explanation of each item and the failure mode it prevents, see the companion blog post.
Phase 1 — Pre-launch (complete before first invite)| Item | What to do | Pass criterion | Failure mode if skipped |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Channel architecture audit | Open the workspace as if you are a new member. Count every channel visible in the sidebar on first join. Archive or hide any channel not needed in the first 30 days. | New member sees ≤8 channels in the sidebar on join day. | First-week overwhelm. Members log in, see 15–20 channels, spend their first 5 minutes browsing instead of posting, and never find a natural moment to introduce themselves. Channel count is the single most common cause of “I joined but never posted” exits. |
| 2. Billing integration test | Run a test payment through the full billing-to-Slack pathway (Stripe checkout → webhook → workspace invitation). Measure the time from payment completion to invitation email delivery. | Test payment → invitation email arrives within 5 minutes. | Cold joins. A member who pays at 9pm and receives their invitation at 9am the next morning has lost the payment momentum. Cold joins have significantly lower day-one activation rates because the excitement peak has passed by the time the member gets access. |
| 3. Day 0 DM draft and test send | Write the personal welcome DM the operator will send to every founding member on join day. Send a test version to yourself at two times: ~8am and ~11pm local time. Read it cold each time. | DM arrives promptly at both times. First sentence is goal-specific, not generic. Ends with one question that requires a reply. | Impersonal Day 0 welcome. A Day 0 DM that is not tested before launch tends to read as a template. The most common untested-DM failure is a generic first sentence (“Welcome to the community!”) with no reference to the member’s stated goal and no specific next step. See three-touch onboarding sequence for the canonical Day 0 DM format. |
| 4. Value proposition specificity check | Read the pinned #general post (or draft it now if it doesn’t exist). Confirm the first sentence names one specific outcome a member will achieve — not a list of resources, not a general welcome, not a feature description. | Pinned post opens with exactly one specific outcome in the first sentence. | Vague first impression. The most common pinned-post failure is a list: “In this community you’ll find resources, expert discussions, weekly Q&As, member spotlights, and more.” A list of features does not tell the member what they will achieve. One specific outcome (“In this community, every member leaves their first month with a documented growth strategy for their community”) creates a commitment the operator can anchor the first 30 days around. |
| 5. Single-action announcement draft | Write the launch day #general announcement that names exactly one action for founding members to take. Draft it in advance; do not write it on launch day while managing invitations and DMs. | Announcement asks for exactly one action (e.g., “Introduce yourself in #intros — one sentence on what you’re working on”). No lists, no multiple calls to action. | Paralysis. A launch announcement that asks members to do five things — introduce themselves, read the pinned post, explore the channel list, check the events calendar, and DM the operator with questions — produces the same behavioral outcome as asking them to do zero things. One action named explicitly and specifically is the format that produces first posts. |
The billing-to-invite gap is the most commonly skipped pre-launch test. Most operators assume their billing integration works because they set it up once and haven’t received a complaint. The test described in item 2 is different from “it was working last month” — it is a timed end-to-end test that measures the specific delay a new member experiences between payment and workspace access. A gap above 5 minutes is worth fixing before launch day; a gap above 30 minutes is a launch blocker. See Slack workspace setup reference card for billing integration setup steps.
Phase 2 — Launch day
Launch day is the one day in the community’s life when the operator has the highest density of founding member attention and the highest density of operator personal bandwidth to spend on individual members. The five items below are ordered by leverage: item 1 (cohort size) determines how many personal DMs are tractable in item 3; item 3 (personal operator DM) is the highest-leverage launch action and should receive the largest share of the operator’s time. The most common launch day mistake is spending most of the day on the announcement post (item 4) and almost none of it on personal DMs (item 3).
Phase 2 — Launch day| Item | What to do | Pass criterion | Failure mode if skipped |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. First invite batch ≤25 | Send invitations to a maximum of 25 founding members in the first batch. If you have a larger early-access list, select the 25 most engaged prospects for cohort 1 and schedule subsequent batches for after the Day 7 scorecard is reviewed. | First batch: ≤25 invitations sent. Operator has enough context on each invitee to write a personal DM without looking them up. | Operator bandwidth collapse. Above 25 founding members, the personal DMs required by item 3 become generic because the operator runs out of time and context. Generic personal DMs produce the same engagement rates as automated templates. The ≤25 cohort rule preserves the operator bandwidth that makes item 3 work. |
| 2. Workspace monitoring setup | Before sending invitations, set up a 4-signal monitoring view: (a) who joined, (b) who posted in #intros, (c) who has been in the workspace for 3+ hours without posting, (d) billing integration status. This can be a simple spreadsheet column, not a tool. | Operator can answer all four signal questions within 2 minutes of checking, without opening individual member profiles or Slack Admin. | Invisible non-posters. Without a monitoring setup, the operator defaults to watching who is active (the 20% who were going to engage anyway) and misses the 80% who joined but did not post. Item 5 (follow-up DMs) is only tractable if the operator knows by hour 3 who has not posted. |
| 3. Personal operator DM to every founding member | Within 6 hours of each member joining, send them a personal DM from the operator’s own Slack account (not the bot, not Workflow Builder). The DM should reference something specific about this member — their business, their stated goal, a piece of work they’ve shared publicly. End with one direct question that requires a reply. | Every founding member who joins on launch day receives a personal DM from the operator’s account by end of day. Each DM is visibly different from a template — a member comparing two launch DMs could tell they were not auto-generated. | Cold launch. Founding members who receive no personal operator contact on launch day experience the community as a product, not a community. The personal operator DM is the intervention most correlated with day-one post rates in communities under 50 members. It is also the item most commonly replaced with “the welcome DM from the bot will cover it” — which it does not. |
| 4. Single-action announcement in #general | Post the pre-written single-action announcement (drafted in Phase 1, item 5) in #general. Pin it immediately after posting. Do not post multiple announcements or add to the post after it is live. | Announcement is live in #general and pinned. Operator sends no additional #general messages on launch day that would compete with the single-action call. | Action diffusion. A second announcement asking members to do something different on launch day splits attention and reduces the probability that any single action is taken. The pre-written announcement from Phase 1 item 5 was designed as a single action — deploying it as-written and then leaving it alone is the correct launch-day action for this item. |
| 5. Follow-up DMs to non-posters within 3 hours | Using the monitoring setup from item 2, identify every founding member who has been in the workspace for 3 or more hours without posting. Send each non-poster a follow-up DM from the operator’s account: a specific micro-action tied to a named open thread (not “feel free to introduce yourself whenever you’re ready”). | Every member who has been in the workspace for 3+ hours without posting receives a follow-up DM before the end of the operator’s launch-day working window. | Missed first-activation window. The first 3–6 hours after joining are the highest-probability window for a first post: the member is curious, the community is new, and the social cost of a first introduction is lowest because the community is small enough that every post is noticed. Members who do not post in their first 6 hours have a significantly lower first-week activation rate than members who post in hour one. See Day 3 conditional nudge format for the micro-action message structure. |
The personal operator DM (item 3) is the highest-leverage action on launch day. Most operators underinvest here because it is time-consuming and difficult to scale. That is precisely why it works: founding members who receive a personal DM from the operator on launch day feel individually selected, not mass-enrolled. In a founding cohort of 25, the operator can write 25 genuinely personal DMs in 60–90 minutes. This is the only phase of a community’s life where that investment is tractable at the member count that matters — the founding cohort whose first-week behavior will set the social norms for everyone who joins after them.
Phase 3 — Days 2–30
The four items in Phase 3 are timed interventions, not open-ended tasks. Each has a specific day range; running them outside that window significantly reduces their effectiveness. The Day 3 conditional nudge is the most time-sensitive: it must be sent on day 3 (not day 5 or “whenever I get to it”) and sent only to members who have not yet posted (the conditional filter is the most important mechanical decision in the sequence). For timing rationale, see the companion blog post.
Phase 3 — Days 2–30| Item | Day range | What to do | Pass criterion |
|---|---|---|---|
| Day 3 conditional nudge QA | Day 3 (not day 2, not day 4–5) | Review the member list. Identify every member who joined and has not posted in any channel. Send each non-poster the Day 3 conditional nudge: a micro-action message naming one specific open thread and including an explicit bar-lowering statement (“one sentence is enough”). Do NOT send to members who have already posted — the conditional filter is the most important mechanical requirement. The nudge fires only to non-posters. | Nudge sent on day 3. Sent only to members with post count = 0. Message names a specific open thread (not “feel free to post whenever”). Message includes an explicit bar-lowering statement. No nudge is sent to members who have already posted. |
| Day 7 operator scorecard | Day 7–8 | Run the four-gate scorecard review: (1) activation rate — what % of the cohort has posted at least once? Pass if ≥40%. (2) Specificity signal — do the #intros posts name a specific goal? Pass if ≥50% of posts name a specific problem, project, or question. (3) Connection signal — has any peer-to-peer exchange occurred without operator prompting? Pass if ≥1 unprompted peer-to-peer exchange has occurred. (4) Value signal — has any member mentioned a specific outcome they achieved? Pass if ≥1 unsolicited value mention has appeared in any channel. | All four gates assessed and documented. Decision recorded: “all gates pass → cohort 2 invite proceeds” or “X gate(s) failed → specific fix identified before cohort 2.” |
| Week-two async challenge | Days 10–14 | Send a goal-matched async challenge prompt to all founding members. The challenge must: name one specific action tied to each member’s Day 0 stated goal (or inferred from channel subscriptions), use share-plus-reply framing (member posts their challenge result AND replies to one other member’s result), and be timed to a 5–7 day window with a specific deadline. Do not run this challenge earlier than day 10 or later than day 14 — days 10–14 is the re-engagement window between the day-7 scorecard and the first significant churn risk (day 21–30). | Challenge posted in the designated channel between days 10 and 14. Challenge uses share-plus-reply framing. Challenge has a named deadline. At least one member has replied to another member’s challenge post by day 17. |
| Day-30 cohort activation rate audit | Day 30–31 | Count every founding member who has posted at least once in any channel since joining. Calculate the activation rate (posted at least once ÷ total founding cohort). Use the day-30 decision table below to determine the next step for cohort 2. Document the audit result: activation rate, which Day 7 gate(s) if any failed, and the cohort 2 decision. | Activation rate calculated and documented. Cohort 2 decision made and recorded per the day-30 decision table. If rate <45%, specific root cause identified (Day 0 DM, channel architecture, or billing-to-invite gap) before cohort 2 invitations begin. |
Day-30 decision table
The day-30 cohort activation rate is the single most diagnostic metric for a paid community in its first month. It reflects the cumulative quality of the full launch sequence — not just one intervention. The decision table below maps the three activation rate outcomes to the three next steps for cohort 2. The thresholds (65% and 45%) are benchmarks for operators who ran all five pre-launch items and all five launch day items; an operator who skipped several pre-launch items should expect lower activation rates and should diagnose the specific gaps before interpreting the rate as a threshold-pass or threshold-fail.
| Day-30 activation rate | What it means | Decision for cohort 2 | What to do now |
|---|---|---|---|
| ≥65% | Launch sequence is working. More than 2 out of 3 founding members posted at least once in their first month. Founding cohort social norms are establishing at a healthy activation level. | Scale normally. Invite cohort 2 on the original timeline. | Proceed with cohort 2 invitations using the same launch sequence (no changes). Document which Phase 1–3 items you ran so the sequence is reproducible for subsequent cohorts. The ≥65% rate indicates the Day 0 DM, channel architecture, and the Phase 3 timed interventions are all working together. |
| 45–64% | Launch sequence is working but one item is underperforming. The majority of founding members activated, but a significant minority (35–55%) did not contribute in their first month. Review Day 7 scorecard results to identify which of the four gates failed. | Scale with one fix. Identify the specific gate that failed in the Day 7 scorecard and implement the targeted fix before cohort 2 invitations begin. | Map the failed Day 7 gate to the root cause: activation rate gate fail → audit Day 0 DM and channel architecture; specificity signal fail → rewrite Day 0 DM checklist to require goal-naming in the intro prompt; connection signal fail → add a peer-introduction prompt to the week-two async challenge; value signal fail → add a “share what you learned this week” thread to the programming calendar. Fix the one root cause, run cohort 2 with the updated sequence, and re-audit at day 30. |
| <45% | Launch sequence has a structural problem. More than half of the founding cohort did not contribute in their first month. The community’s social norms are forming around non-contribution, and adding cohort 2 on top of this foundation will compound the structural problem. | Pause cohort 2 and diagnose. Do not invite new members until the root cause is identified and fixed. | Audit the three most common causes of sub-45% activation in order: (1) Day 0 DM — was it goal-specific and did it end with a question that requires a reply? (2) Channel architecture — were there more than 8 channels visible on join day? (3) Billing-to-invite gap — was the gap longer than 5 minutes, producing cold joins? Fix the root cause, re-run the Phase 1 checklist items, invite a second small cohort of 10–15 members, and audit again at day 30. See member activation rate reference card for the weekly audit routine that prevents this from happening with cohort 3+. |
The day-30 pause decision is the most commonly resisted item on this checklist. Operators who reach a sub-45% activation rate at day 30 often proceed with cohort 2 anyway on the theory that “more members will create more energy.” This theory is empirically wrong for paid communities in the founding phase: more members in a community with a broken activation sequence means more at-risk members, not more energy. A second cohort of 25 members on top of a 15-member activated base (60% activation in cohort 1) will lift the activated count. A second cohort of 25 members on top of a 10-member activated base (40% activation) will dilute the activated members and produce a community where 55 of 50 members have never posted. The pause decision is the operationally correct response to a diagnostic, not an admission of failure.
Frequently asked questions
What should be done before the first member joins a paid Slack community?
Before the first member joins, complete five pre-launch items: (1) channel architecture audit — confirm new members see ≤8 channels on join day; (2) billing integration test — run a timed test payment and confirm the workspace invitation arrives within 5 minutes of payment; (3) Day 0 DM draft and test send — write the personal welcome DM, send it to yourself at 8am and 11pm, and confirm it arrives promptly and reads as goal-specific and personally written; (4) value proposition specificity check — confirm the pinned #general post opens with exactly one specific outcome a member will achieve (not a list of features); (5) single-action announcement draft — write the launch day #general post in advance, naming exactly one action for founding members to take. Each item has a specific pass criterion; if the criterion is not met, the item is not done. Skipping or deferring any of these five items produces a predictable failure mode in Phase 2 or Phase 3.
How do you test the Day 0 DM before launching a paid community?
Send the Day 0 DM to yourself at two times of day — approximately 8am and approximately 11pm local time. This tests two things: delivery timing (does the automation or send process work reliably at non-business hours?) and message quality (does the DM read naturally and personally at both times?). Read the DM cold each time as if you are a new member. The pass criteria are: DM arrives promptly at both times, the first sentence is goal-specific and names the member’s reason for joining (not a generic welcome), and the message ends with one direct question that requires a reply. A Day 0 DM that fails one of these criteria before launch will fail for every founding member who receives it. The test takes 20 minutes and should be done at least 48 hours before the first invite is sent, leaving time to rewrite the DM if it fails.
What are the four activation gates in the Day 7 operator scorecard?
The four gates are: (1) activation rate — has ≥40% of the founding cohort posted at least once by day 7? (2) Specificity signal — do ≥50% of the #intros posts name a specific goal, problem, or project (not just a job title and location)? (3) Connection signal — has at least one peer-to-peer exchange (reply, DM, or reaction chain) occurred without the operator initiating it? (4) Value signal — has at least one member posted a specific “this was useful for X” signal without operator prompting? All four gates passing means cohort 2 can proceed. One or two gates failing means identify the specific root cause (Day 0 DM, channel architecture, or week-one programming) and implement one fix before cohort 2. Three or four gates failing means pause cohort 2 and diagnose the launch sequence before continuing.
When should a paid community pause new member invitations?
A paid community should pause new member invitations when the day-30 cohort activation rate falls below 45% — meaning more than half of the founding cohort has never posted in any channel. A sub-45% rate indicates a structural problem in the launch sequence (Day 0 DM, channel architecture, or billing-to-invite gap), and adding a second cohort on top of this foundation compounds the problem rather than solving it. The pause decision is the operationally correct diagnostic response, not a failure signal. The three most common root causes of sub-45% activation are: a generic Day 0 DM that does not give the member one specific action to take, more than 8 channels visible on join day (overwhelming the member before they find #intros), and a billing-to-invite gap longer than 5 minutes (producing cold joins that miss the payment-momentum window). Identify the specific cause, fix it, invite a small second cohort of 10–15 members, and audit again at day 30 before scaling.