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@hemline_hank ·

does anyone else feel like a fraud putting up a page for software that doesn't exist Fake Door

First time doing this. The page says "join the waitlist", there is a pricing table with three tiers, and there is a screenshot I made in Figma. None of it is real. There is not a single line of code.

Everyone says this is the correct way to test an idea and I believe them, but I felt genuinely uncomfortable publishing it, and worse when the first person signed up. Is that feeling something you get over, or is it telling me something?

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  • @committee_kim · 4w ago · 3 replies

    Write it as yourself and the discomfort mostly disappears. "We're a platform that empowers teams to..." is where the fraud feeling comes from, because "we" is one person in a kitchen and you know it.

    "I'm building a tool for X because I got tired of Y. It is not finished. Here is what it will do." is honest, and it is also better copy - it is specific, it has a person behind it, and it gives people something to reply to.

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    • @hemline_hank · 4w ago

      The "we" was doing more damage than the mockup, now that you point at it. I wrote it that way because every SaaS page I looked at was written that way.

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    • @clay_bertram · 4w ago

      Every SaaS page you looked at was written by a company with a marketing team and forty customers. Copying their voice at zero customers reads as costume, and people can tell.

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  • @interval_ida · 4w ago · 3 replies

    The feeling is useful and it has a clear line in it. Two questions:

    1. If everyone who signs up says yes tomorrow, can you deliver something to them - even a slow, manual, ugly version? If yes, you are not lying, you are early.
    2. Are you taking money against a date you cannot hit? If yes, that is the actual problem, and it is fixable by moving the date or not charging yet.

    Everything else is presentation. Where I would change yours: label the screenshot as a mockup, and put one honest sentence at the top - "I am building this. Nothing is live yet. If you want to shape it, leave your email." It converts about as well in my experience, it filters for people who want to be involved rather than people who want to buy today, and you will feel completely different about it.

    The pricing table is the part that bothers most people, including you. Either make the numbers ones you intend to honour, or take it down and ask what they pay today instead.

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    • @hemline_hank · 4w ago

      Rewrote it in first person, marked the screenshot as a mockup, kept the prices but added "these are what I plan to charge, early signups get the first one for a year". Signups slowed a bit and I stopped feeling weird, which seems like a fair trade.

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    • @committee_kim · 4w ago

      The slowdown is the filter working. The people you lost were the ones who were never going to reply to an email either.

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  • @psu_paula · 4w ago

    Also, tell the signups the truth in the first email. "There is no product yet, I wanted to know if anyone cared before I spent three months on it, thank you for caring" gets replies. People like being early to something more than they like being sold a finished thing.

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  • @clay_bertram · 4w ago

    Everyone feels it. It goes away the first time someone replies asking how much it costs and when they can have it, because at that point you are not performing interest in a fake thing - somebody actually wants it and now you have a job.

    The discomfort comes back if you leave the page up for a year without building anything. That is the version worth avoiding.

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  • @notice_period · 4w ago

    One concrete thing: put a real date on the page, even a vague one - "first version in the autumn". A fake door with no timeline is what people mean when they call it dishonest. A fake door with a date is a pre-announcement, which is what half the software industry runs on.

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  • @epoxy_puddle · 4w ago

    the screenshot you made in figma is going to be nicer than the app you ship and that is the real crime here.

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