T-minus 12–8 weeks: foundation
Everything downstream depends on this block. Lock the one-sentence narrative and test it on strangers. Publish tokenomics with named answers for float, unlocks and utility. Stand up the landing page with analytics and lead capture. Start the founder posting cadence. Begin community architecture (channel/group separation, moderation tooling, onboarding flow). Open press relationship-building — introductions and background chats, not pitches yet.
- Narrative locked and stranger-tested
- Tokenomics doc public: float, unlocks, utility, treasury policy
- Site live with analytics, waitlist and tracking links
- Founder X/LinkedIn cadence running (4–5/week)
- Community infrastructure + moderation stack deployed
- Press background conversations opened (no pitches yet)
- KOL longlist built; engagement-quality audits started
- Legal review of all launch claims and disclosures
T-minus 8–2 weeks: assembly
Convert foundations into loaded pipelines. Shortlist and contract KOLs across tiers with disclosure clauses. Confirm exchange/launchpad logistics and announcement timing. Draft the full content calendar for launch week — every post, thread, email and Space, written and approved in advance. Place one or two narrative-seeding stories in trade press. Run the airdrop/claim dry-run on testnet, including the failure states. Pre-draft crisis comms for the three most likely bad scenarios.
- KOLs contracted in three waves with disclosure terms
- Exchange announcement window confirmed in writing
- Launch-week content 100% pre-written and approved
- Tier-1 exclusive negotiated under embargo
- Claim-flow dry-run completed, failure states tested
- Crisis comms pre-drafted (exploit, dump, delay scenarios)
- Market-maker arrangements reviewed against float plan
- Tracking: unique links per channel, dashboards live
Launch week: choreography
Day 1: exchange announcement plus embargoed tier-1 story land the same morning; founder thread within the hour; community call same day. Days 2–3: KOL wave two, Spaces with partners, press follow-ups with day-one data. Days 4–5: proof wave — volume, holders, integrations published as content; AMA addressing the hard questions publicly. Throughout: moderation on high alert, admin response under 30 minutes, scam-warning pins refreshed daily.
- Announcement + tier-1 exclusive: same morning, coordinated
- Founder thread within 60 minutes of announcement
- KOL waves on schedule — never all at once
- Daily on-chain proof content from day 3
- War-room channel with 30-minute response SLA
T-plus 12 weeks: the phase that decides everything
Reserve 25% of total budget for after the listing. Weekly ecosystem updates without exception. Holder-only utility or access drops in weeks 2, 6 and 10. Continued founder cadence — the accounts that go quiet after TGE tell the market exactly what the token was for. Retention reporting at 30/60/90 days against the pre-launch baseline, reviewed like a board metric, because it is one.
- 25% of budget reserved post-listing, contractually if using an agency
- Weekly shipping updates, zero skipped weeks in the first quarter
- Holder utility drops: weeks 2, 6, 10
- 30/60/90-day holder retention reviewed as the core KPI
Questions we hear about this
Mechanically yes, effectively no. Press relationships, community conviction and narrative diffusion have organic lead times — compressing to four weeks produces a technically clean launch nobody notices. If the date is fixed and close, cut scope (fewer channels, one great story) rather than depth.
Pre-drafted crisis comms, followed closely by the post-listing budget reserve. Teams plan for success exclusively, then improvise their worst moments in public. The two hours spent drafting exploit/dump/delay responses are the highest-ROI hours in the checklist.
You need operators who have run it before — in-house or agency. Launch week punishes first-timers because errors are public and permanent. Chalk Labs runs the full checklist as a service (the founding team is 50+ launches deep), but the checklist works whoever executes it.
Compress phases 1–2 into two weeks, weight KOL and community spend far heavier than press, and treat speed as the strategy — but keep the moderation stack, crisis drafts and disclosure discipline intact. Meme velocity without ops discipline is how treasuries get drained.