At startups we've worked at/for in the past, they implement a Wait Listbefore the App is fully built
so that marketing efforts can commence in parallel to development.
As an Engineer I've always thought that all efforts should be focussed on the product, 🧑💻
and that artificial wait lists are a bit of an anti-pattern. 👎
Why make people wait if the product is ready for them to try it now? 🤷♂️
I still maintain that forcing people to wait to use a product is lame as it destroys momentum.
The only case I would consider it would be if we didn't already have an MVPor we thought our MVP was too poorly executed and we had an unmissable marketing opportunity
and could afford to worry about post-event/opportunity "conversion rate" ...
Possibly Valid Use/Situations
Imagine that you as the founder/product-owner of the App want to review each signup
and send a personal message welcoming the person to the App.
Feel free to correct me, but I don't think we want to personalise the App onboarding experience. 💭
The only other reason for rate-limiting and waitlisting people is a technical bottleneck.
And this one is real: GMail only allows 250 outbound emails to be sent per day. 📧
Once we reach that limit, we either need more Google Accounts or a rate-limit.
If we had 250 sign-ups per day we'd have very good problems!
At startups we've worked at/for in the past, they implement a
Wait List
before
theApp
is fully built so that marketing efforts can commence in parallel to development.Examples
There's no shortage of examples on Dribbble: https://dribbble.com/tags/waitlist https://dribbble.com/shots/20470789-AlignUI-Design-System-Waitlist-Page
https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/194400/218269855-f15e4d5d-b2c9-45c6-b6d2-df6544a051da.mp4
Context
As an
Engineer
I've always thought that all efforts should be focussed on theproduct
, 🧑💻 and that artificial wait lists are a bit of an anti-pattern. 👎 Why make people wait if theproduct
isready
for them totry
it now? 🤷♂️I still maintain that forcing people to wait to use a
product
is lame as it destroys momentum. The only case I would consider it would be if we didn't already have anMVP
or we thought ourMVP
was too poorly executed and we had an unmissable marketing opportunity and could afford to worry about post-event/opportunity "conversion rate" ...Possibly Valid Use/Situations
Imagine that you as the founder/product-owner of the
App
want to review each signup and send a personal message welcoming the person to theApp
. Feel free to correct me, but I don't think we want to personalise theApp
onboarding experience. 💭The only other reason for rate-limiting and waitlisting people is a technical bottleneck. And this one is real:
GMail
only allows250
outbound emails to be sent per day. 📧 Once we reach that limit, we either need moreGoogle Accounts
or a rate-limit.If we had
250
sign-ups per day we'd have very good problems!