Article

Superhuman's Waitlist Case Study: 180K Users at $30/Month

Waitlister Free Intermediate

A breakdown of how Superhuman turned a waitlist into a filter using onboarding calls, surveys, and referral gating, so joining actually cost people effort. It is a concrete model of the friction our short answer recommends. Read it to see what a waitlist that proves intent looks like in practice.

  • Friction (calls, surveys, referrals) separates curious from committed.
  • Referral gating makes access something people earn.
  • Design the join step to demand effort, not just an email.

The question it answers

  1. Is a waitlist with a lot of signups actual proof of demand?

Read with it

  1. The single best thing ever written on customer conversations. It teaches you to ask about the customer's life and past... momtestbook.com Book · ~130 pages The Mom Test Rob Fitzpatrick
  2. The permission slip to recruit users by hand, do things manually, and deliver 'insanely great' experiences to your first few... paulgraham.com Essay · ~15 min read Do Things That Don't Scale Paul Graham
  3. A tactical follow-on covering the channels and motions top B2B startups scale after the first ten. Grounds distribution... Lenny's Newsletter Article · ~15 min read How to win your first 10 B2B customers Lenny Rachitsky
  4. Video · ~25 min How to Talk to Users Eric Migicovsky
  5. This is the cleanest statement of why a big waitlist number can fool you: it only ever goes up, and joining costs a person... whoisnnamdi.com Article · ~8 min read Waitlists are a Vanity Metric Nnamdi Iregbulem
  6. This is the most concrete walkthrough of how to test a niche when you have nothing built yet: put up a page describing the... kromatic.com Essay · ~15 min read Fake Door / Smoke Test Kromatic (The Real Startup Book)
eChai Partner Brands The partnership →