The Pre-Launch Marketing Playbook: Getting 1,000 Waitlist Signups Before You Ship

Great products with empty launch days are the saddest thing in indie-making. You shipped. It works. You posted. Crickets.

This playbook solves exactly that. It's a 6-week pre-launch system for getting to 1,000 qualified waitlist signups **without paid ads, without "growth hacks," and without a big Twitter audience.** It's what we advise every maker before they [submit to ScrollLaunch](/dashboard/products/new).

## The one-sentence system

You will pick **one problem**, publish **three artefacts**, and participate in **five communities** over six weeks. That's it. Everything else is execution.

## Week 6: Define the problem

Write a 500-word problem statement. Not "we're building X" — "when \[ICP\] tries to \[job-to-be-done\], they hit \[specific pain\], and the current workarounds are \[hack 1, hack 2\]."

Publish it on your personal blog or dev.to as "Why I'm building X." This post becomes the gravity well for everything that follows.

Set up a landing page with:

- The problem statement (not the solution)
- A waitlist input (use Beehiiv or a plain Resend form)
- One screenshot or GIF of the ugliest-but-working prototype
- No pricing, no testimonials, no logos-of-VCs

## Week 5: Build the three artefacts

**Artefact 1 — The benchmark.** Pick the most obvious competitor and do a rigorous comparison. Publish it as "We measured X vs. Y on \[metric\]. Here's what we found." Tables, charts, reproducible method. This becomes linkable forever.

**Artefact 2 — The story.** A 2,000-word build-in-public post: the moment you noticed the problem, the prototypes that failed, the technical decision that unlocked it. No pitch. Just story.

**Artefact 3 — The giveaway.** A free tool, template, or spreadsheet that solves a *related* problem for your ICP. Gate it behind the waitlist. This single artefact typically brings 30-50% of your pre-launch signups.

## Week 4: Find your five communities

Communities > channels. A community is a place where your ICP already trusts each other. A channel is a broadcast. You want three of the former and two of the latter.

### Example for a dev tool

- **Communities**: r/programming, a specialized Discord (e.g. Rust or TypeScript), Hacker News, Lobste.rs, Dev.to
- **Channels**: Twitter/X, LinkedIn

### Example for a design tool

- **Communities**: Designer Hangout Slack, Dribbble, Read.cv, a niche Discord, Reddit r/web_design
- **Channels**: Twitter/X, LinkedIn

Join all five. Read for a week before posting. Set push notifications for terms related to your problem space so you can help first, pitch never.

## Week 3: Become useful

Spend week 3 being the most helpful person in those communities. Answer questions. Make thoughtful comments. Share others' work. Resist every urge to mention your product.

This week feels slow. It's the most important week.

## Week 2: Release the benchmark

Publish Artefact 1 — the benchmark. Post it across all five communities, tailored to each.

**Do:**
- Lead with the most surprising finding
- Link back to the full methodology
- Credit the team whose product you benchmarked
- Respond to every comment for 48 hours

**Don't:**
- Cross-post the exact same text
- Call out the competitor negatively
- Post only on channels (Twitter/LinkedIn) — communities drive 70% of quality signups

A good benchmark post generates **200-400 waitlist signups** in week 2.

## Week 1: Release the story

Publish Artefact 2 — the 2,000-word build-in-public story. Post the TL;DR on each channel, link to full post on your blog.

This is also the week to ask for specific early-access testers. Pick 20 public replies to DM for 1:1 onboarding. Record their reactions. You'll use these quotes on launch day.

Expect another **200-400 signups** if the story resonates.

## Launch week

Publish Artefact 3 — the giveaway — on Monday. Tease on Twitter and in communities. "I made this spreadsheet to solve \[related problem\]. Giving it away. Also, we're launching \[your product\] on Wednesday."

Launch Wednesday. Now:

1. Submit to [ScrollLaunch](/) and collect a permanent weekly-ranked page
2. Post Show HN
3. Email the waitlist with personalized early-bird codes
4. DM every tester from week 1 asking them to share authentically

If you did the work, your launch looks like: 1,000 waitlist members → 300-450 early-week signups → 10-30 paying customers by end of week 1.

## The magic is that there's no magic

No growth hacks. No viral loop tricks. Just: pick a real problem, be useful, ship artefacts, repeat.

The makers who crush launches in 2026 are the ones who've been teaching and contributing for 6 weeks before launch day. Everyone else is shouting into the void.

## FAQ

### How many people do I need on a waitlist to launch?

Quality beats quantity. 300 genuinely interested people will out-convert 3,000 cold signups 10:1. Aim for 1,000 because it gives you statistical confidence, but if you can only get 300 qualified people, you're fine.

### Should I use paid ads in pre-launch?

Generally no. Pre-launch is about signal and positioning, not volume. Paid ads in pre-launch generate noisy data that misleads your post-launch decisions. Save the budget for week 2 after launch when you have conversion data.

### What if I don't have a Twitter following?

You don't need one. The playbook above emphasizes communities over channels precisely because communities give you leverage even with zero followers. A thoughtful Hacker News comment reaches more ICP-relevant people than a 5,000-follower Twitter post.

### How do I keep the waitlist warm?

Send a monthly update with one specific thing: a feature, a lesson, a preview. Every single update. Consistency is what separates dead waitlists from ones that convert.

### Can I skip to launch if I already have an audience?

If you have 5,000+ relevant followers, you can compress weeks 3-4 into one week. You still need the benchmark and story artefacts — they become your backlink engine long after the launch spike fades.