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Why we picked it This is the balanced take you want before you decide: a waitlist can be a real growth lever or it can be a black hole where leads go to die, and the difference is whether you nurture the list or just collect emails. It grounds the call in actual conversion benchmarks and walks through what Superhuman, Dropbox, and Clubhouse actually did. Read it as a way to pressure-test your reasons for gating, not as permission to gate.
What's a Good Waitlist Conversion Rate (and How to Increase Yours)
From Venture Curator by Sahil S
- Waitlist size on its own is a vanity metric. What matters is conversion, and lists that sit ungated for months quietly rot.
- Speed to access is the biggest lever: give people in within about a month and conversion is far higher than making them wait indefinitely.
- Treat the waitlist as your first product experience (emails, previews, real engagement), not a parking lot for signups.