Launched on BetaList yesterday. 237 beta testers, $99 spent, 5 emails captured. Here's the breakdown.
Solo founder building DadOS — an iOS app for dads who give a damn but also lose it sometimes. Pause button when you're about to snap, AI coach for the questions you don't want to Google, daily missions to show up better in small ways.
Yesterday (June 16) I was featured on BetaList Standard ($99). Here's the unfiltered data 24 hours later:
The numbers:
237 dads currently testing on TestFlight
5 email signups directly from the BetaList referral (verified by referrer header)
0 comments on the BetaList listing itself
Geographic mix: France, India, US — all strangers, not my friend network
What worked:
The site already had 7 real testimonials from beta testers visible above the fold. I think that's why the click → email conversion held up despite low listing volume.
A small modal between "Join the Beta" and TestFlight captured emails before redirect. Without that, I'd have 0 of these. Lesson: always own the email list, never just send people to TestFlight directly.
Founder note on the listing was written in plain English about a specific bad night, not feature copy.
What didn't:
I never sent the rally email to my 23 OG testers asking them to comment on the listing. 0 comments killed the algorithmic boost. This was the single biggest miss.
BetaList Standard for a consumer iOS app is a lower-volume play than for SaaS. The platform skews technical.
I built the email capture and Supabase counter the morning OF launch. Should've had this live 2 weeks earlier so anyone arriving from anywhere was captured.
What I'm doing next:
App Store submission targeted July 15
Show HN attempt next Tuesday morning
Reddit (carefully — r/daddit bans promo, so the play is build-in-public posts in r/indiehackers and r/SideProject)
Direct DMs to ~9 dad creators on TikTok/IG who already make content in the space
Solo founder, no funding, 3 months of nights and weekends. Honest question for this community: if you've launched a consumer iOS app via TestFlight first, what's the one thing you wish you'd known before App Store day?
Site: mydados.com
Listing: betalist.com/startups/dados
TestFlight: open
I've been thinking about using betalist as well, I've previously tried other directories but you're right, comments really do help. What I'm wondering is mainly how did you go about getting those early 23 testers? I'm developing a saas and need beta testers, but I'm struggling to find them, your help would be hugely appreciated!
Five verified signups from a $99 feature is the number almost nobody is honest enough to post. I paid for two directory launches early on — one got me 11 signups, the other 3, and exactly one of those 14 ever turned into a real user. Directory traffic over-indexes on curious browsers who collect betas and never activate.
The 237 testers matter more than the 5: where did THOSE come from, and are they hitting the core action in week one? For me, paid spots drove signups that sat near zero activation, while one small niche forum sent far fewer people who actually stuck. That's the channel worth doubling — which bucket did your 237 come from?
What stood out to me wasn't the 237 testers or the 5 emails.
It was how quickly the conversation becomes about channels once people start showing up.
The more interesting question might be whether the thing those first dads responded to is the same thing you'll eventually scale around.
Yeah, that's the question keeping me up.
Honest read on what got the first 237:
None of those scale linearly. Reddit is a one-shot lottery. DMs cap at my time. BetaList is a one-time event.
What I think the first 237 actually responded to is the specific framing — "pause button for the moment you're about to lose it" — not the channels. The cereal story lands because every dad has a version of it.
So my bet is: the message scales, the channels don't. The next 1,000 probably come from dads telling other dads, plus content (X, YouTube shorts) that re-tells the cereal-moment in different forms.
Could be wrong. Ask me in 90 days.
The reason I find that interesting is that "the message scales, the channels don't" and "the message worked because of the channel it appeared in" can both look true for quite a while.
That's what makes these situations so hard to read early on.
90 days will definitely be interesting.