AMA: Sentry Director of PMM, Alexandra Sasha Blumenfeld on Product Launches

It depends on the type of launch, but here’s some additional ways I have measured "success" in the past beyond just sign-ups and revenue: Product Engagement: We track how often and deeply users interact with the product, using a tiered engagement score. Tier 1 captures basic interactions, while Tier 3 reflects advanced usage or stickiness. Our goal is to move users from awareness to deeper adoption, and we start measuring this during open beta as we gear up for GA. Content Engagement: With more ...Read More

Some of the "mistakes" I've experienced across a few different companies that can cause friction both internally as well as externally are: 1. Not truly understanding your customers problem before you build: You build off of your own echo chamber/vibes/or an internal edge case without really talking with customers before launching. Or potentially not aligning internally. It typically makes it so you waste cycles and or worse— deprecate or phase out a product, which can cause low morale for the t ...Read More

As the "GM" of your product area, it's incredibly valuable to cultivate a culture of ownership among all your cross-functional partners. When the entire product pod feels a strong sense of responsibility for the product's success – viewing all feedback, good and bad, as chances to learn and improve – that's when you'll drive greater product adoption and reduce friction between teams. But going back to this specific question - my first step is always to process and understand the feedback myself. ...Read More

If I’m understanding your question correctly, it’s about deciding when to go for a soft launch (releasing to a limited audience in beta) versus a GA launch. At Sentry, we take a slightly different approach—our launches are more about strategic exposure (when, where, and how to talk about a product or feature to maximize its impact) rather than the traditional soft vs. full launch. Since we build in public, we’re constantly talking about product updates—even when they’re just ideas or still in al ...Read More

Great question! I’d recommend checking out my other answer on "soft launches," where I outlined how we approach beta launches. But to add more on how we manage beta launches, we break it down into a few distinct phases: Limited Availability (Closed Beta) We have a “hit list” of customers who we know would be a great fit and reach out directly via email and in-app messages. This phase helps us gather focused, high-quality feedback from trusted users who are already solving similar problems. Early ...Read More