"Due to demand we have had to introduce a waiting list..."

Wait, so did you actually build this? Or is this just an example of you testing your startup idea without coding it?

edit: oh man, did you steal that dashboard from Voziq? http://www.voziq.com/social-media-monitoring-tools/ I don't know if this is hustling (good) or shady (bad).

edit 2: odd that someone else used that exact same picture for a testimonial, but gave the guy a different name and title: http://www.fusebill.com/legal/terms.aspx

For what it's worth, HN is very good about giving early pre-MVP feedback -- there's no need for deception.

Hi nostromo, I've currently got the product to MVP stage and I've around 25 paying customers at the moment.

It does need further work and polish, but everyone that is using the app has given great feedback that it's a really useful tool.

Are you going to respond to the stolen pictures or fake names on your landing page?

Hi jc4p, sorry for the slow reply I was just having lunch (a pizza and an episode of 24 no less!). I borrowed the image of the dashboard as LookAfts is still a work in progress. I guess I could link an image here for the HNers though.

The other image and title came from one of our users. I've emailed him to see what the deal is.

What's up with the quote on that page from "John Hobbs" (guessing it's fake) using a picture of Bryan Person (http://twitter.com/bryanperson)? The pic is also hosted by Unbounce's s3 account it seems:

http://unbouncepages-com.s3.amazonaws.com/www.lookaft.com/te...

Isn't this product essentially supposed to compete with unbounce?

edit: I'm guessing that it's because the other option on google image search for "person" don't look that genuine. https://www.google.com/search?num=10&hl=en&authuser=...

I think testing / experimenting with ideas is critical - Google (and others) taught us that it works. I think vetting a new business idea before investing time & money into it is also wise - nobody wants to waste their time and money.

But I'm left with an uneasy feeling when folks take the "tease" approach that this is advocating (and, currently, using).

* Here's an idea!

* Here's why it's great!

* Sign up now!

* Ohhhhh sorry -- not actually available. Give us your email though (and thanks for the conversion data point).

I know for me, it feels dishonest. There's no harm actually done - you haven't truly "baited and switched", but you've baited and not delivered, and I think that makes a poor first impression. It sets a tone of dishonesty with your earliest (potential) customers.

I don't know the answer - I wish I did. I understand that if you change the messaging ("Let us know if this sounds good" vs. "Sign up now!") you distort your experimental conversion data, but I think it's worth considering the cost of presenting a poor first impression vs. running the test.

Perhaps there's a middle ground?

Hi Nlh, that is a great point and it's something I have wrestled with myself.

I haven't come to a conclusion other than it's physically not really doing anyone any harm and if one stunning start up comes of it that changes the world for the better, then it has to be worth it.

You are letting the visitor know before they drop you their email that you're not ready for them and so you aren't deceiving them.

"You are letting the visitor know before they drop you their email that you're not ready for them and so you aren't deceiving them."

This is not true. Your product states that "Due to demand we have had to introduce a waiting list... Because of the of demand we have had, due to the success of Entrepreneurs, Inventors and Business People using LookAft, we need to add you to a queue to get going."

The above statement is very different than "Our product isn't ready yet, but if you're interested you can sign up here...", and is rather deceptive. It makes me think you have a functioning product and an already active user base when that simply isn't the truth.

All this isn't to discourage your efforts, but maybe to get you to rethink the way you approach your potential customers. Keep at it, but first and foremost -- be honest.

Very cool to see this pop up. I think a hosted service for validating an idea could be very useful for many, especially the non-technical founders who could then get some better validated traction to share with a potential technical co-founder.

Great to see Buffer has been an inspiration. If anyone is interested, the screenshot comes from this post with the full details of how I used this method to go from idea to paying customers in 7 weeks: http://blog.bufferapp.com/idea-to-paying-customers-in-7-week...

"Great to see Buffer has been an inspiration."

YABPV (yet another buffer publicity vehicle). And I mean that with admiration btw.

Ah ha just the person! I am in fact a non technical 'founder' and your post was the inspiration that lead me to create LookAft after faffing about for too long creating my own testing pages.

Buffer is awesome, keep up the good work on that. If you have any issues with me using the image please let me know.

Awesome to hear :-)

No issues at all, quite the opposite - I'm super happy it inspired this! Let me know if I can ever help with anything, more than happy to jump on a Skype call if it might be good. My email is in my profile ;)

Cheers Joel. I will certainly take you up on this. I will drop you an email shortly.

"Because of the of demand we have had, due to the success of Entrepreneurs, Inventors and Business People using LookAft, we need to add you to a queue to get going. "

I think it's fine that you make these things up but please word it another way. As it is now, anyone can see that it's BS. Also, if you have 25 paying customers, do you really need to make John Hobbs of Uni CRM up?

Tim Ferriss advocated something like this in his book, The Four Hour Workweek. He said he used to run Google Adwords campaigns for different book titles, and see which one had the highest CTR.

I've often thought about that idea for business ideas. Spend $100 on a Google Adwords campaign advertising your business in 2 or 3 different models, and see which one has the most interest.

I'm sure this is one of the things you're least interested in, but there are JPEG artefacts visible in your logo, pretty badly.

Hi theta. I had to quickly resize the logo when I created the page. I will take a look at it in a minute. Thank you for the feedback.

"we need to add you to a que to get going." -> que = queue. Oh, and it would be better if the logo would be clickable, now I can't return to the homepage without using the back button of Chrome.

Thank you for the heads up. I've updated the spelling and added a link to the title.

On the Sign Up page: "success of Entrepenures, Inventors and Business People" -> success of Entrepreneurs, Inventors and Business People

Hi Verg, thank you for that correction. I've updated it.

Haven't had time to try it, but how is this different from LaunchRock? http://www.launchrock.com/

Launch rock collects emails and that's about it. LookAft is all about tracking 'conversions' to see what % of visitors would likely sign up and use your service.

It also includes a preliminary pricing page so you can test price points (which is obviously important to see if a product vs customer acquisition balance works out) by seeing how many people click through each price point and give their emails.

Please let me know if you have any other questions.

Love how you are testing this business idea in the same manner as advertised with an Unbounce page and a call to action before coding it out. :)

The app is coded (to MVP standard) and I've 25+ paying customers. I'm struggling to keep up with demand and so I've had to go to an unbounce page to support the traffic.

Obviously my priority is to keep the service running for the people who have already applied.

I tried building a similar app two years ago. It's a smaller market than you probably realize. Moved onto bigger and better ( and profitable ) things. Good effort tho.

Thank you for the feedback Juan. I actually specialise in niche apps rather than 'startups'. Perhaps I could ask for your email or twitter to drop you a couple of questions?

Been a member for half a year now yet your first submission and all comments are for your own product?

Classy.

The whole idea sounds so much like fooling people i don't feel it is morally justified.

I can completely understand how it feels like fooling people, and I felt that too when I thought to use this approach for Buffer.

I think a "ask for forgiveness rather than permission" mindset can be the most beneficial here.

In my mind, there's no doubt that there is much more value in terms of validation that you can obtain through using this method rather than telling people up front that the product isn't ready yet (some people just love to try new things, and that's much worse validation for whether the product will work).

The key I found is communication. If you are very open and ask for feedback, and if you have a two way conversation with the person after they give you their email, then you can actually get them on your side even more since you've had personal contact.

The "ask for forgiveness rather than permission" is what is needed in all aspects of life as far as I'm concerned. It's generally what I live by.

Hi Anovikov. This is something that I have wrestled with and another commenter has made a similar comment. If you have any suggestions on how to make it less deceitful please let me know and I'll see if it's anything I can implement.

What exactly does this do? I have no idea!

Hi Holgers - Thank you for your comment, this obviously means that I need to do a better job selling how the service works!

Basically, you create a landing page for your product or service using a super quick and easy template that we host. This page then links to a pricing page and then when the visitor clicks get started they are redirected to a page that allows them to add their email and receive an invite when the product / service is ready.

What we do which is special, is take all data from the % of users that clicked through and through what price point and show this information visually on your dashboard so you can make an informed decision whether your startup idea / product is viable.

Please let me know if you have any other questions.

Arh ok. But I still have to promote my idea and all that right?

Yes. But that can be done very quickly and easily using adwords to drive some traffic over. It might be a small investment in cash, but you're likely to come across your A* startup idea in days rather than months.