Day 2: four signups, and I just deleted my approval flow

Follow-up to the day 1 post (3 visitors, 1 signup, it was me).

Current count: four signups. My cousin is one of them. How many are active users? I honestly can't tell yet, and that's kind of its own answer.

Watching the funnel taught me something uncomfortable. My flow was: sign up for a waitlist, wait for me to approve you, come back, sign in. Three steps, and two of them existed for my comfort, not the user's. At my scale an invite gate isn't scarcity. It's friction wearing a scarcity costume. Someone lands on the page excited, joins, and by the time my approval email arrives they've moved on with their life.

So today I removed it. Signing up now goes straight to a welcome and the product. I still see every signup in my admin panel, the approval just happens instantly. If there's ever a real reason for an invite gate, it's one env var to turn back on.

Also shipped since yesterday: all the big bugs from my friend's feedback session are fixed and live (the mobile sideways-scroll, the cropped X images). Took about a day.

For people who've run early-stage funnels: did a waitlist ever measurably help you, or is it theater below a few hundred signups? I genuinely can't find evidence for the first case.