Why Stripe’s MVP Landing page wouldn’t work in 2018

Stripe's MVP page back then vs What it would be in 2018

In this article, I will show you how Stripe could have used their landing page to promote and validate their product if their circumstances have been different, for example, if they didn’t have friends for their first customers or hadn’t been in the Y combinator program.

Basically, this is meant to show how Stripe’s landing page should look like if it were being launched today by an Indie Hacker (just like you!!).

Things to keep in mind:

Stripe launched around 7 years ago and grew very fast so it’s hard to know what exact features they were offering initially but I tried my best to find those out.
The value proposition for this MVP will be about easily integrating credit card payments with Stripe’s API. From the interviews I researched that seemed to be the case.
I kept the awesome and famous style from the Stripe’s current website but I’ll give full credit to the amazing Designers at Stripe. I did this so it’s still easily recognizable :)

How Stripe's MVP page looked like

Using the WayBack Machine here's what I found about Stripe's past. I believe the idea came around in 2010 and officially launched in 2011.

Here are the screenshots I got from that time.

In theory, this actually seems very logical, you build a simple page with a paragraph saying what you are building and people will show up on your page, sign up and wait until you launch to give you all their money, RIGHT?

WRONG!!!! Don’t be fooled by the simplicity of this page because this was just a way to collect emails, not a page where you can drive traffic to get validation and customers. This is what 99% of Indie Hackers are doing and without a proper process, it doesn’t work!

Why this page worked for Stripe

They didn’t use it! They didn’t expect people to signup and accept that as validation, instead, they did the things that don’t scale.

"If anyone could have sat back and waited for users, it was Stripe. But in
fact they're famous within YC for aggressive early user acquisition."

Paul Graham, Y Combinator - Do things that don't scale

They used their time at the YC program and met a ton of other people building startups which were pretty much their ideal early adopters.

While building up this network they probably referred this page to any interested in signing up and that was the only use for this.

If you want to get sign-ups from around the world or you are based in a place without access to these opportunities this approach probably won’t work to get your MVP and your first customers going.

Why creating a page like this doesn’t work in 2018

Amazing communities like Product Hunt and BetaList have enabled you to get a ton of new customers or signups if you do it right BUT… the community is being bombarded with side projects, tools or new launches.

Everyone and their cat has done this. How will you stand out and not look like a scam?

People are becoming harder and harder to reach if you don’t have a great explanation of the value you are offering.

Even BetaList doesn’t accept submissions unless they have a decent website, this wouldn’t even work there anymore!!

How you can do it without the YC program or a network of potential customers

Especially at the early stages of a company, you should keep in contact with your ideal customers so this actually heavily based on what Stripe’s founders did but remotely and using a better Landing page to get the leads instead of them coming from their network or YC's network.

Step 1 - Define your ideal customer

Seems like the most basic step ever but this is a never-ending task that holds all the info on how to acquire your customers.

Make a list of:

What is the #1 benefit this product could bring?
Who can benefit from this the most?
Where do these people hang out?
How can I reach them?

Step 2 - Setup a Landing page to target them

[Sneakpeek]

This doesn’t have to be a kick-ass beautiful page BUT this will be your first impression and your way to consistently deliver a good pitch from potential customers.

Here are the requirements for a good page:

It’s easy to understand the value you are offering.
It’s professional and doesn’t look like a scam.
Converts visitor into leads properly.

Don’t know how to build a page like this? I have a 5 step process that you can get by signing up for my free email course.

Step 3 - Send traffic to it

There are a ton of ways to get traffic to your landing page. If you did you homework on step 1 there should be a few good ways to target your ideal customers.

Here some examples to reach your ideal customers, send traffic to your page and hopefully validate your idea.

Content marketing
Cold Emails
Cold Calls
Twitter outreach
Quora questions
Linkedin prospecting
Launching on PH or Betalist
Indie Hackers

Why not do this without a proper Landing page?

I feel that will be a very common question and it’s a good point! Imagine your Landing page as the predictable and repeatable way of doing a good pitch over and over.

Let’s say you are cold emailing...How will you explain the value and how it works if you can’t write long emails that people will reply too?

If you are cold calling...how do you make sure the person you talked too communicates the value to the rest of the team without you being there to sell?

I think you get the idea, that’s whole and only point of having a good Landing page!

Pro-tip: The only way to validate your MVP/idea is you if someone pays for it! Not if someone likes the page, if the idea sounds, if “I will want this later” or any similar excuse.

Step 4 - Use your signups/leads to get more validation

If the Landing page is communicating the value properly and you are sending the right people to it then you get some leads from people that interested in your product. If you are good/”lucky” enough you might even get some orders right away.

After they sign up you need to find a way to follow up and maybe even get them on a call to figure out if what is the most important solution to them and if there could improvements in your messaging that might be keeping you from getting even more leads.

Step 5 - Pivot, Rinse and Repeat

There’s no way you will be able to reach Product-Market-Fit in your first try so it’s super important you have a way to tweak the page to target a slightly different market or solution and still be able to keep getting feedback from potential customers.

Without a proper process, this might take you months or you might not even reach product-market-fit :(

A common problem: Is it the Landing page or the Product-Market-fit?

Let me know if you want me to write an article like this in the comments below 👇

Step 6 - Product-Market-fit

Now that you have got a few customers and you know you can create processes to make your MVP scalable it is time to take the objections and benefits from your first few customers into hopefully next hundreds or thousands in the future.

This process is also part of my free 5 step email course that you can get here for FREE!

To be continued…

This article turned out WAY too long that I expect so I will have to break it down into at least 2 parts.

Here’s a sneak peek of what Stripe’s page should look like if they were launching there MVP today (assuming the same payment technologies from 2010 otherwise they would have several competitors already)