how to profile application startup with visualvm

Question

As far as i can tell, you can only profile a running application using VisualVM.

Does anyone know of a way to profile the launch and startup of a java application us

Answer 1

Both common Java development environments (NetBeans/Eclipse) support application execution directly with attached VisualVM. In case of Eclipse you have to install a plugin. In case of NetBeans the support is AFAIK already integrated.
Even if do not have the sources you can still run the JAR file(s) via both environments and therefore start your app connected with VisualVM.