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Our 18,000+ waitlist product just launched and is #1 on PH today. AMA

Hey y'all!

I'm Ankith, co-founder @ ceo of Macro.io

After ~ a year of building in beta, we just launched our product publicly today and we're currently #1 on Product Hunt.

Macro is a Zoom client built for expression, inclusion, and collaboration.

If you want to break up the monotony of Zoom, give us a try. Best part - you can use Macro to join any Zoom meeting even if everyone else is still on Zoom. Macro’s a personal choice.

AMA about building on top of a platform, pivoting to where we are today, launching on Product Hunt, or anything else!

  1. 6

    How did you build a waitlist of 18k users? Were you creating content? Were you getting people to advocate for your product early on?

    1. 1

      aside from the reserve username, we really didn't do much. It was 18k over a ~year so the amount of time we had it up helps. We did tease the app on social and didn't stop our beta testers from sharing screenshots / feedback publicly so that added a bit to the awareness

  2. 2

    nice landing page, liked it.

    1. 2

      Thank you! will pass that on to the team :)

  3. 2

    Nice one. That's an impressive waitlist which hopefully translates to users ✨. Similar question to @th3marine - just wondering if you were on an accelerator program or not?

    1. 1

      While my co-founder John and I were in business school we did Underscore VC's UFirst summer accelerator - specifically oriented around first time founders!

  4. 1

    why are you building on Zoom? And how has the tech experience been?

  5. 1

    You mentioned that you pivoted - would be interesting to understand why you pivoted on a pre-launch product strategy!

    1. 1

      when we first launched macro it was more of a proof-of-concept on a 3rd party zoom client. had some of the same features as today, but also notes and this whole productivity angle.

      we pivoted away from productivity and more to the 'human' side of meetings because

      1. talking to our users, making meeting more productive didnt make them more enjoyable / didn't get rid of zoom fatigue.
      2. productivity in meetings essentially means integrations and the zoom apps that were coming down the line were a much better marketplace ecosystem than we could build as a 3rd party
      1. 1

        That sounds like an amazing journey. And the pain you are solving is so relevant - now that virtually everybody has experience how horrible it is to try to replicate face to face interactions on zoom, the pain is real. So it's just awesome to see developments in the space.

        You have a new sign up!

  6. 1

    Really amazing :) Can you be my hunter on PH?

      1. 1

        Done. Thanks a lot :)

  7. 1

    Is this a self-funded project?

  8. 1

    Hey Ankith, thanks for sharing!

    We're launching our beta in about a week or so and we're collecting emails for when we launch, but definitely nowhere near 18k in the wait list. If I may ask, since our target market is similar, what were your top performing tactics/strategies/sources to get people interested and providing their email?

    1. 3

      Last week we launched our first waitlist mini campaign which was a 'reserve username' flow.

      We noticed that people have this crazy drive to snag their preferred username/handle on pretty much any new app - regardless of what it does or how small it is.

      So we built a flow where people could reserve a handle and fill out a profile, and it generated a custom open graph image that they could one-click share. Went viral on design twitter!

      https://twitter.com/withmacro/timelines/1429896988909318147

      1. 1

        That's a good idea! I'm building a product that uses usernames and causally mentioned on the landing to provide your email to be notified early and reserve a username, but now I'm wondering if I should just build a flow like this!

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