Sepas — From Prolonged Pre-launch to Public Release
Product and go-to-market case study for moving a technically developed relationship-wellness product into public launch, behavioral analytics, monetization, and early market validation.
Context
Mar 2025 — Sep 2025 active phase · Public launch → early validation → maintenance/frozen development phase · Maturity: Operational.
Problem
The product had been developed for a long period but remained unreleased because launch scope, readiness, market confidence, analytics, and monetization were not clear.
Users
Persian-speaking couples using assessments, partner connection, engagement features, and premium relationship-wellness experiences.
My Role
Organizational/public title: Technical Product Manager. Primary functional role: Product & Go-to-Market Consultant.
Responsibilities
- Defined launch readiness, MVP scope, phased roadmap, PRDs, user stories, acceptance criteria, product testing, and a two-week delivery cadence.
- Defined persona, target market, positioning, freemium/subscription model, pricing, event taxonomy, funnel measurement, and acquisition experiments.
- Coordinated engineering, therapists, content, founders, and growth work through public release and early validation.
Constraints
- Long pre-launch development and perfectionism had delayed market learning.
- Active development froze from mid-Shahrivar 1404 because of financial constraints after launch.
- Team outcomes must remain team outcomes under product coordination.
Product Decisions
- Define a launchable scope and move to market learning instead of waiting for a perfect product.
- Instrument onboarding, assessments, partner invitation, engagement, and subscription behavior.
- Use channel-quality evidence rather than optimize only for reach.
- Keep unique paying users distinct from total premium beneficiaries in a couple-level access model.
Delivery & Technical Approach
- Supported separation of test and production data, security-password changes, backup automation, and CI/CD improvements that reduced deployment time from hours to minutes at team level.
- Introduced Metrix SDK/event tracking, support tooling, notification scenarios, beta/production separation, and release/QA practices.
Product flow
- Launch readiness
- MVP / roadmap / delivery process
- Public release
- Behavioral instrumentation
- Acquisition experiments
- Subscription / premium access
- Early market validation
Evidence / Outcome
- Later internal dashboard: 1,450 unique registered users and 25,800 assessment responses.
- 758 couple contests were recorded; 344 completed, a 45.4% completion rate.
- 58 unique paying users were recorded; one successful purchase could activate premium for both connected partners.
- A recorded acquisition comparison showed 31.67% click-to-install for the targeted Kaf channel versus 2.86% for Tapsell in that specific campaign context.
What I Learned
- Launch can be a product decision when more pre-launch polish is blocking evidence.
- Channel quality can matter more than top-of-funnel volume.
- Payment and entitlement metrics need precise definitions in multi-user access models.
Evidence Boundary
The 58 figure is unique paying users, not total premium beneficiaries. Forecasts and business-plan targets are not achievements. The channel comparison is context-specific. Active development later froze because of financial constraints; this is not rewritten as “launch failure.”
Next Iteration
Prioritize retention and premium-value validation by cohort, partner-connected behavior, and subscription outcomes before broadening acquisition spend.