I worked at a startup where we had a “waiting list” model - a page where you gave us your email and you’d get an invite later.
The CEO thought this was a good way to build up anticipation, and make sure things were fully polished before opening the floodgates.
We got a few waves of attention, which meant we had about 30k emails on the list at some point.
Of course, this large number put more pressure on us to “get things perfect before we launch”, and it was over a year before the CEO decided it was time to let everyone in.
But by the time we did, people had lost interest, and our conversion rate was abysmal. While a bit buggy and unpolished, the product was still very functional a year before, and had we just let people in we’d probably have gotten very valuable feedback a year early.
(I left the company a long time ago, and it is now in zombie mode)
I'm guessing the CEO wasn't a product person? Expecting to launch with a perfect product is just not going to end well. I view the waitlist as a way to get a basic idea to a broad audience and both validate your idea and iterate quickly based on feedback. Waiting too long will just kill what passing interest someone had to enter their email in the first place. We've had the waitlist for a few months and that's even longer than I would like.
I should add that the waitlist strategy isn't always the right one. If you are a new team building a product in an unfamiliar space, it might be better to start with a small group of users. We've been fortunate to have a succesful product in a similar space, so we can take a little bit more of a risk.
Pfft, 30k? I'd love to have 30k leads.
I have, like 10 people on my "coming soon" mailing list. And I personally know 5 of them :D
I have no flippin' idea how the other 5 found my landing page. I haven't been running ads or anything. I was going to wait till I actually launched (hopefully in a few weeks).
My thought process was the same. Pay for Adwords, et al., to drive people to a page that basically says "Sorry, we're not ready yet, but sign up for our mailing list, maybe?" Not sure that's a good idea.
The CEO thought this was a good way to build up anticipation, and make sure things were fully polished before opening the floodgates.
We got a few waves of attention, which meant we had about 30k emails on the list at some point.
Of course, this large number put more pressure on us to “get things perfect before we launch”, and it was over a year before the CEO decided it was time to let everyone in.
But by the time we did, people had lost interest, and our conversion rate was abysmal. While a bit buggy and unpolished, the product was still very functional a year before, and had we just let people in we’d probably have gotten very valuable feedback a year early.
(I left the company a long time ago, and it is now in zombie mode)