The whole world is raving about Minimum viable products and with the advocacy that is going on towards building the bare minimum required and letting the market decide, we see startups and entrepreneurs all around the world launch, bare minimum products.

The problem however is that most of them fail, and then bucket themselves in the category that it was a matter of failing fast, when in reality, if you look at the stats it starts to show that not enough of the market paid attention, gave it a shot and gave the product a chance in the first place. In some cases its a genuine case of a bad product, but in most cases, its also the case of not having an audience to even launch do.

Seth Godin says it better in "When Minimum viable Product doesn't work" : http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2011/11/when-minimal-viable-product-doesnt-work.html

Case in Point: Most Startups and Entrepreneurs lack an audience - a following that they can launch to, who will engage with the product and kickstart the feedback cycle.

Secondly, its fairly obvious for anyone who does an analysis on the posts on HN, that to a fair bit of companies and especially the YC companies, this form serves as that very platform (doubled by Demo day and the press) if the "voting rings" in HN are an indicator, they are trying to rig the system towards their favor to democratize it, and as bad as it is, and this community fights hard to preserve the balance, there is a need.

Here's a framework towards a community based launch platform. Would love to hear your thoughts - All of it - the good, the bad and the ugly.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/1j5vnuyllqxfkg4/Early%20Adopter%20Network%20%28EAN%29%20v1.1.pdf