MG Seigler gives some unexpected advice to application developers:

Avoid being featured by Apple in the App Store when you first launch your app at all costs.

His theory is that getting featured in the App Store is unlikely to bring long-term users and might hurt your reputation if you encounter scaling issues.

This is some seriously-incredible, yet counter-intuitive advice and is a bit deeper than a simple “slow and steady wins the race”-type suggestion. App developers are better off finding and fixing bugs while they have a smaller audience than when they’re being inundated with new users because of an App Store feature. It will be nearly impossible to keep up with support emails and fix any potential bugs that these thousands of users might encounter — possibly causing them never to return.

Siegler goes on to suggest growing users through other channels such as word of mouth, services like Product Hunt, or the tech press. I couldn’t agree more. The last thing you want after launching your app is multiple days of full-on panic trying to put out a million small fires.