I Launched Invite Only for 8 months. Hereās why I like it.
Hello my fellow Indie Hackers š!
A little while ago, I read this post about launch strategies and it got me thinking of how grateful I am of my own.
You donāt need me to tell you, but the big launch is one of the biggest milestones for a new indie hacker - and that makes sense. Itās the first time your precious baby sees the world, the first true test of product fitness.
Along with many other questions, many of us ask this big question: invite only or public? I went with invite only and hereās why it was the right choice for me.
A quick overview of my launch
In April 2021, I launched Sidekick (a productivity tool that blocks distracting sites and schedules pomodoro sessions) to private beta, otherwise known as invite-only.
My earliest adopters were my friends and from there, word of mouth. After the first 30 users, I started participating in different Reddit communities and submitting Sidekick to beta sites, such as BetaList.
I spent time with users through email or in our Discord community. Along with just casual conversation, I shared my roadmap, behind the scenes updates, articles, memes, and even sent out the occasional product poll.
Within 8 months, (maybe not impressive numbers to you, but still shellshocked till this day for me) I had grown our user base from 2 to 100, released 12 big features, and resolved too many to count bugs and UX/UI improvements. When January 1st hit, we transitioned to public beta.
Why invite only
Hereās a quick TLDR for the main points on invite only vs. public.
As you can see, there are a lot of reasons to do invite only launches. This one reason was it for me - it was king.
Maintain a tight feedback loop.
A good feedback loop was so important to me because it meant a direct channel to the people using my app. Thereās two parts of a feedback loop: receiving feedback and addressing feedback.
Receiving feedback
Invite-only meant a group of people who were truly interested in Sidekick so much that they even signed up after a waitlist. This meant dedication, actual interest, maybe even superfans. I knew this would lead to quality feedback instead of spam or distractions.
Addressing feedback
Now, Sidekick is a mighty team of 2 and as hard as it was, I had to be realistic about our time. I knew the only way we could actually address feedback was to keep the group small.
Putting all this together led to iterations every single week. It was amazing. We saw Sidekick change right before our eyes - and that was all thanks to our users.
To my surprise, this actually even created a sense of a small family. It gave me the opportunity to ask simple things like āwhat are you working on?ā or opportunities to celebrate everyday wins by the humans behind the screens.
This wouldnāt be possible with a large group - there simply just isnāt enough time in the day or enough me to dedicate.
When you ask me quality over quantity, I choose quality every time. Now, Sidekick doesnāt have huge numbers, but it does have a small group of people who are hugely passionate about Sidekick and the concept of deep work. And thatās everything ā itās why the product is improving, why it will continue improving, and why one day, Sidekick will have some bigger numbers.
So, can you TELL Iām advocating for invite-only launches or not? Just kidding - everyoneās different and what works for me might not work for you.
What are your thoughts? Invite only vs. public? Any tips to share with soon-to-be-launchees? If youāre thinking about doing something similar, let me know if you have any questions!
This was fun. Thanks for reading! Want to connect more? Iāve recently joined the Twittersphere! :)
All my best,
Thatās a really good idea. I was going to have people signed up and paid ready for the āopeningā on launch day but I could let a few in to tweak stuff first. Thanks for the suggestion ā¤ļø
of course! Good luck with the big launch!
I'm mulling over this exact problem at the moment. I'm building a community and would prefer a small group who are committed over a big group who aren't, but I don't want to limit my potential before I even launch! š«
Too true - chicken and the egg situation! You could always treat it like a soft opening of a new restaurant. Soft openings are for trying out dishes with a friendly crowd, gathering reactions, and making quick improvements before the big one happens.
Good luck with your decision! I'm sure you'll make the right one for you in the end :).
Thanks for sharing, very interesting. I am experimenting with a similar strategy atm, would love to talk more about your experence and learnings!
Hey Allison, first of all thanks for an interesting read.
A question if I may, you mentioned you ran a 5-minute survey. Was it useful? How many people responded? Thanks in advance and good luck!!
hey thanks for reading!
Yes, I ran a 5 minute survey. It was useful! I asked 4 questions:
Why are you interested in Sidekick? -> helped me understand value prop
What are your short/long term goals? -> helped me get to know them a little bit better/more personally. Also I got answers like building a business, becoming a doctor, graduating school, making my mom proud so had a side effect of just being a huge motivating and driving force.
What are your biggest distractions? -> helped me expand on our roadmap
Where did you hear about Sidekick? -> helped me understand referral sources
Every time, someone signed up for the waitlist, they got the survey. So I closed the waitlist at 100 people and the survey was filled out by 40 people.
Hope that helps! Let me know if you have any more questions!
Very useful!
I see a lot of surveys that bore me to death. Good idea sticking to the essentials and getting people to respond. Thanks for a great read!
Hey Allison, any chance you could spare 15 min to chat about building that waitlist? It would be immensely helpful for me. If you can, could you please ping me at [email protected]. Many thanks!!!
yes of course. Anything for a fellow indie hacker! I'll send you an email today.
Hey Allison,
Congrats on your private beta!
I actually randomly found Sidekick earlier this year when I was searching for a tool to help me focus on my daily highlight and ended up using it for a while. Even though I no longer use it because I now organize my day using just a pen and paper journal, I can definitely say that Sidekick is a cool app and I would consider switching back to it in the future.
I'm building an app myself and I'm looking to launch an MVP in the next 2 to 3 weeks. I have not considered a private beta before reading your post, but now I'm thinking about it.
Would you say that running an invite list beta helped you gain more loyal/superfans users over just having it public?
Hey! Thanks so much for your kind words :). Did you see my meme on Twitter š your comment made me think of it. You know where to find us if you ever want to use Sidekick again!
I would definitely say it helped gain loyal users. Between my partner and I, we knew almost every person using the app. We had each person fill out a survey so we even knew a little about their background.
This really helped us make improvements that they actually cared up, which then turned to trust (and also continued usage and continuous feedback loop) and even friendship. It also turned into an investment in the product from the users side - for example, our community was started and is ran by a couple of our users.
Nice strategy I also launched my startup this month and got my first 25 paying clients although I released it in public beta first. Just followed you on twitter.
hey! That's awesome! Congrats. That's huge I'm jealous :D. Look forward to connecting!
Thank you, Allison, I'm currently launching my first startup and this is definitely hitting home for me. I just followed you on Twitter āĀ looking forward to connect with you.
Hey there! Congrats on hitting a huge milestone! Wish you all the luck in the world :)
Hey Allison,
great work there! I like your idea and thanks for sharing! I think we should connect and have a talk :)!
Hey! Thanks for reading. DM me on twitter :)
Hey Allison,
would you recommend invitte-only for a social-media-like solution? The platform is a little bit niche for creators as well
hey there! I think it would work for a social-media-like solution. Worst case, why don't you experiment with it just for a few months?
Nice! I definitely see the benefits in your invite-only strategy. But I'm curious to know - are you planning to make it public at some point, and if so, when? I can understand why a new online community, for example, would launch as invite-only: create a buzz, ensure good quality of content and quality of network etc...but since your product is a productivity tool, surely those things don't matter as much? If it was public, people could still recommend your product to their friends, but you could still benefit from an influx of customers from the general public...
Hey! Thanks for reading.
Yes you're right! We capped our private beta phase at 100 users and worked at reaching a certain number of KPIs for this group. Once that was set, we moved out of invite only and allowed Sidekick access publicly as of January 1 :).
Hey Allison, congrats on growing your number of users - very cool. I have a quick question about your invite-only strategy: were the invites exclusively limited to a select type of person? So, for example, when Facebook first launched it was limited to students at Harvard only.
Hey! Thanks so much.
We didn't select specific people, but we narrowed down our audience by promoting Sidekick in specific communities (those to do with productivity, deep work). Then, we asked each new invite to answer a 5 minute survey so we could get to know our demographic a little bit better.