LinkedIn is down today with the following message:

We are busy upgrading LinkedIn with technology and features to add even more ways for you to leverage your professional reputation and network. We will return around 9:00pm PT.

We apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience. Thank you for using LinkedIn!

Is this newsworthy and why am I blogging about it? Many entrepreneurs, especially CEOs with big corporation background, tends to emphasize on 24×7 uptime along with the necessity to handle gazillion hits on the launch day. Most people don’t even understand the launch-early-and-fine-tune-later strategy. Look at none other than Google to appreciate the need to launch early, even with kinks.  See what Tagore has to say about this.

Unless you are guaranteed million hits on day one, launch early and reach out for  feedback from the initial users. If LinkedIn can have a day off, there is nothing wrong in your startup  having a day off.   This may not be applicable if customers are paying for your services, which changes the expectations radically. Your company is more an exception than norm if customers are willing to pay for the  services.